Two Breaths

This is not one of those stories I need to overcome.

It’s a story of two breaths.

One was on my first inhale.

One was on her final exhale.

It was and remains real.

And I was there for both breaths.

I was loved by her and not nurtured. What was missing was my mom’s attention to me.

She let me go. She was always number one to my dad, and my dad was always number one to her.

We weren’t allowed to watch television. So, every day she sent me out of the house from three o’clock to dinnertime.

It was like out there something pulled me to the swamps and the deep-water holes in our back woods.

I always ended up in their murky waters and somehow, they gave me breath and the freedom to witness the mystery of what lies underneath.

I knew I was loved.

And next to feel the adrenaline of the known inside our warm house, and my mom and dad in their continuous cocktail hour conversation. I knew never to interrupt.

My mom never questioned once where I even was or why my play dress, I’d come home in was sopping wet. She just trusted.

I realize now as a mom: Did she ever worry about me?

I just trusted dinner would come.

My mom just trusted.

She trusted life. She gave me the word “freedom.”

Even the shocking day that life pulled her under. I never believed she wouldn’t come out of that coma. I just trusted in her.

I wonder what her conversation was with my dad that brought her back.

Later he told me, he was giving my mom mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. They were having a conversation with the devil.

And they won.

One day, I realized worry is a habit.

I don’t worry about our girls.

I knew worry would change their breath.

Their lives.

I didn’t want this for them.

No one ever hugged worry into my body.

My mother’s life story wasn’t supposed to be this way. But she didn’t bring worry with it. She didn’t make me feel it was my responsibility to worry about the situation.

Now, our girls have gone off into the richness of their own murky waters.

So, on this particularly rough day for me, when my daughter texts, “…feeling super grateful this morning…. We have such a beautiful life,” I trust I can take that in.

I trust my breath.

And know this is her real story.

One she’ll never have to let go of.