I’m sitting in the guest chair of the dimly lit optometrist room watching my oldest daughter Gianna prepare for her yearly exam. Gianna, at the perfect age of 14, is sitting in the patient chair directly across from me, getting ready to cover her eyes and read the top line of bold capital letters. As I watch her there, my mind snaps back to a time when she was much younger.
In my mind, I see Gianna as she was almost 10 years ago, dressed in her signature style leggings with a short jean skirt over top, her thick blond hair framing her cheeks that still had a little bit of baby chub left in them. She wasn’t a baby anymore, but the whispers of that time were still there on her little face. She was sitting in the chair, reading that same row of black letters she was reading now.
Seeing her there in that time, my heart squeezed. Like her little hand came out from that memory and grabbed my heart like she used to hold my finger to fall asleep at night. It wasn’t just the memory of her being smaller. What tugged my heart was the specific memory of her legs.
I see Gianna sitting in the chair, her legs splayed out in front of her, unable to bend at the knee. Those legs stuck out, feet dangling just a bit in the air, and she bounced her little silver ballet flat foot, probably a little nervous for her exam.
Now, looking at the same girl in the chair, her legs graceful fold over the structure. Her feet sit comfortably on top of the footrest like they should, not dangling in the air innocently, looking for some space to rest them on. I see a young woman with legs longer than mine. Where before the exam chair seemed to loom over her, she now sits easily, like Goldilocks who found the right fit.
I wasn’t expecting this visual to pop into my mind. I wasn’t in any mindset to be sentimental or emotional. Yet I was slapped in eyes with a flashback of a time when my first baby still looked like a baby. And, in the middle of that damn exam room, I found my eyes starting to well up with tears as I looked at her. I had to hard swallow my feelings because I didn’t want to look like a mad woman. Who cries at an eye exam? I think me crying at that moment would have embarrassed Gianna more than the fact that her younger sister Evie was making it rain hand sanitizer all over the floor of the exam room.
No, I held in the tears, and I don’t think anyone noticed my almost breakdown. Luckily the dim lighting and Evie’s manic spraying of sanitizer acted as a shield.
Being a mom is full of unexpected moments like that. Where one minute you are chugging along with no thought of the passage of time, and the next thing you know you are sucker punched in the throat with the realization that your babies aren’t babies anymore. It’s hard to keep your eyes dry when these memories and reminders creep in. Sometimes I let them flow out, because holding them in is too heavy. But sometimes, like this day in the optometrist room, I hold back the tears but also hold tight to that memory of my baby with her feet dangling in the air.