I Think You Knew

*dedicated to the children and teachers who lost their lives at Robb Elementary in Uvalde on 5/24/22 who will never get to confess their secrets to their own mothers

Dear Mom,

I drank the whiskey.

When I won that bottle at the distillery tour in Ireland at the tender age of fourteen, I said I wanted to keep it as a souvenir. I lied.

I can still feel the way it scorched down my throat, matched only by the burn of guilt that pooled in my stomach.

I think you knew.

I was nervous.

When I was going into brain surgery after I turned eighteen, I wanted you to think I was brave. I didn’t know then it was braver to share fear, so it didn’t fester. I said I wasn’t nervous. I lied. The terror shook my bones as they wheeled me back.

I think you knew.

I knew it wasn’t a blood clot.

In Israel I was twelve weeks pregnant. Waiting for a miscarriage after the doctor said the pregnancy wasn’t viable. You held me while I cried and bled and writhed in agony on Shabbat. Two days later in a bathroom at the Jordan River I didn’t come out for far too long. “It was just another blood clot,” I said finally. It wasn’t.

I think you knew.

I shoplifted the ring.

My boyfriend snuck over in the middle of the night.

Dad did give me a drink of his beer.

I didn’t go to the football field that night.

I’ve been drunk.

I think you knew.

Secrets shift, and stories change.

But worst of all my misdeeds and greatest of my confessions is this;

I’m mad you didn’t warn me.

Oh, you told me.

You told me about raising two kids while dad was in the military. How family was thousands of miles away. You told me it was hard. But you didn’t warn me how easy it is to let your dreams fall when you’re mothering. A house of cards built on sand, decimated by the sweetest sticky hands.

Oh, you told me.

You told me how much you loved me. How proud you were. But you didn’t warn me that loving little creatures would wreck you past repair, how the very voice that breaks you down is the only one that can heal.

Oh, you told me.

You told me you worried. It was in the strict curfews and checking in before cell phones were even a thing. But you didn’t warn me how the worry keeps you up at night, lying in bed until it makes you sick with dread and all you can think is; what was life before this?

I confess.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know love would come so easy but be so hard. I saw the way you mothered. But didn’t know what it meant to be one. And now that I am, I see you better. And perhaps the fact that these are my only confessions show that even if you didn’t know what you were doing, you did it right. I told you about every kiss. Every boy. Every fear. Because I never worried that you’d judge. Disapprove? At times, yes. But you knew I had to make my own mistakes. And I’m still making them.

So here I am. Two kids in and torn between pure bliss and pulling my hair out. Reminded every day that my secrets aren’t really secret from you. Because moms always know. And even if you’d warned me, I couldn’t be prepared.

Not for the way your life fills to the brim.

Not for the guilt you feel.

Not for the dreams left untended.

Not for the hope that blooms.

So, take my tea, it’s always been yours.

Let’s sip it together until my babies have secrets of their own.