All we had to do was get inside, unpack, and get ready. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve.
3
MAGGIE
The next morning,I went over to my mom's to make Christmas cookies. We had been back in each other's lives for a while now, but there was still so much time to make up for.
And going to my mom’s place in town had me thinking even harder about having children. I had to be honest with myself and admit that my mom was a big part of the reason why I hadn't moved forward with having a family of my own. She had abandoned me when I was sixteen, and somewhere deep down, I worried that I had the gene that would allow me to do that to my own child.
Of course that’s not something you can say to your un-estranged mother.Hi Mom, glad you’re back, but you also fucked me up for life and questioned my faith in motherhooddidn’t really have a nice ring to it.
So I didn’t say anything at all, focusing instead of mixing the cookie dough, getting the frosting exactly the right color.
My mom studied me across the table, stirring a bowl of red frosting. “You’re quiet today.”
I let out a sigh, still looking at the green frosting in my bowl. “Just in my head, I guess.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to say,” I finally answered. My chest already felt tight. Maybe part of me was afraid she’d leave again if I made her feel too bad for her mistakes, even though I knew it wasn’t logical. She’d been around for years, had tried so hard to make up for lost time.
“Magnolia, you’re scaring me,” she said.
I looked up at her concerned eyes–a perfect mirror of my own–and said, “Is it okay if we have a hard conversation?”
I could see her shoulders tense a little like she was bracing herself, but she nodded. “What's going on?”
I chewed on my bottom lip. There really was no way to say this… “How could you leave me when I was just a kid?” I asked. She’d explained it to me before, but my brain still couldn’t make sense of it, even as a grown woman.
I saw her eyes flutter closed. Her perfectly painted nails drummed on the table for a moment like she was trying to ground herself.
Seeing her uncomfortable wasn’t great… She was my mom, but she was also the woman who left me for years, the woman I thought I would never see again. And her behavior had me seriously doubting motherhood myself.
“Sometimes when you're drowning, it's hard to think about getting your head above the water, much less think about anyone else,” she said.
But my jaw clenched together. “Aren't parents supposed to think about their children first?” The words came out sharper than I intended, but I meant them.
She tilted her head, her eyes full of so much compassion for me, for herself. “I know what I did was wrong, but I didn't think you were drowning with me, Maggie.”
My lips parted, her words sinking into my brain. All this time, I’d thought about what my mom had done. How she’dabandoned me, left her child all alone. I wondered if it meant I wasn’t good enough, or if I didn’t deserve her love somehow.
But what she was saying was the opposite.
She saw me as strong. Capable. Resilient. And that’s why she felt safe to focus on getting herself out of the abyss.
Maybe I needed to see myself that way too. I needed to see myself as someone capable of rising to whatever challenges I faced, who had a partner that would help me along the way.
“What brought this on?” Mom asked, breaking me from my thoughts.
My throat felt thick as I swallowed. “We’re thinking about starting a family.”
Her lips grew into a small smile. “I know I’m lucky to call you my daughter, but I think any kids you have would be luckier to call you Mom.”
My eyes stung with emotion. I blinked them quickly, trying not to cry.“Thanks, Mom.”
She patted my hand on the table. “Now let's focus on these cookies or Rhett will never let me hear the end of it.”
4
