I absently take a sip of the soda on my desk as I read through another email, unlit cigarette in my other hand, as I chew on my lower lip deep in thought. The email is from my lead developer explaining that another process failed when they were pushing changes to production. What it really means is probably another three conference calls to explain to stakeholders why my project team has another delay in getting the new risk monitoring tool in place. In the world of post-Covid shutdowns and supply chain issues, risks to supply chains are all the hype now.
Unfortunately, that’s the division I work in as an I.T. Project Manager.
The hyper chirping from my cell phone interrupts me from typing a reply, and I look down to see the smiling face of my oldest daughter’s Facebook picture on my phone. Checking the clock to see how far I am from my next meeting, I answer.
“Hey sweetheart,” I say.
“Whatcha doin’?” she asks and I can tell from her tone she has tea to spill.
“Working.”
“When’s your next meeting?”
“You’ve got twelve minutes,” I laugh, looking down at the video feed. She’s in her car, parked in front of her house from the looks of the background and she grins.
“Good, I’ll keep an eye on the clock.”
Kaylee launches into an animated story about the girls at one of her jobs, complaining about her typical workday with a problem co-worker. I give appropriate reactions, only half listening as I continue to work through a presentation I’m giving in my next meeting, refusing to let guilt eat me alive as I do so.
“And it’s not like she even had to be there today, Mom, she just likes coming in to start shit…” Kaylee continues and I have to smile. If I didn’t, if I took the time to appreciate these moments and really sit and think about how much my 21-year-old self missed out on, I’d probably just cry. This thought almost spirals me down into a rabbit-hole of depression as I hear my mother’s voice in my head – “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
“‘Ope – you gotta go,” Kaylee stops abruptly.
“Sorry baby, are you working tonight?” I ask, focusing on the screen.
“Nope, maybe just dashing with Dad.”
“Okay, I’ll call you later, after dinner and stuff.”
“Okies.”
“I love you!”
“Love you Momma, Byeeeee!”
She grins in her wide, almost-dimpled grin and hangs up, leaving me to take a deep breath and sit back against my chair.
It isn’t until much later in the day when I think back to the call with her that I realize that I never thought I’d live to see this moment – my oldest out of the house, grown and living away from me. I think about her younger sister’s graduation coming up within a few months, and the finality that comes with it.
Why is it finality?
There is a little Hag that has set up residency in the back of my brain most days, and she is a bitch and a half with getting me to second-guess myself. This voice though, isn’t the Hag. This one is a much softer, more baritone voice, one I equate with being God or the Holy Spirit if you believe in that sort of thing.
It’s final because I don’t know how to exist past this.
And there it is, in raw truthfulness, I forgot to plan for what comes next… what comes after.
“You should be good at the after,” the calming voice says.
“Why?” the Hag chuckles. “Because she’s done such a bang up job in this After?”
Cackling laughter drowns out any positive reply, and as I tune all of it out, the pit of my stomach drops to the lowest point it can as anxiety starts to make my hands tremble.
Nothing good ever happens in the After.
What I know about the After is that it promises to be ALL NEW, but the advertisements never mention all the pain. What I know about the After is that you’re expected to continue on and put on a happy face even though you’ve just had your life completely shaken up and torn apart, but you don’t talk about the Before because no one really knows how to handle it when they’ve never been in the Before one minute and in the After the next.
The Before for me is a place where I’m fighting with Andy over whose turn it is on MarioKart, or yelling at Stefanie to put my markers away before she ruins them. The Before is hearing Mom from the backroom cussing out a ref while watching a Bulls game on TV. The Before is a home that while dysfunctional at best, still has a rosy warmth of a life being lived here. Even the shag carpet, while somewhat scratchy, is soft enough to sleep on. That’s the Before.
The After is waking up to find out the glue that made everything rosy and warm is gone like a whisper on a breeze. It’s the suffocating blindness you feel when you think about all the things she didn’t prepare you for before she left, or the bitter taste of guilt when you curse the heaven’s for taking her but leaving him. The After is the bleeding soul that is stitched back together with a child’s hope that the sweet and caring side your father is showing you at the funeral, isn’t only because he’s center stage right now.
The Before is a place where you daydream on a sunny day, that the miles of cornfields surrounding you are ocean waves of some destination you’ve not yet made it to, but the After is the realization that it’s a drought and there is no more water anywhere.
They are harsh realities, the Before and After, one you long for and the other you learn to navigate. You learn to tell people ‘thank you’ when they offer condolences after learning you lost your mother as a child, instead of bursting into tears at the mention of her. The After is spent never telling anyone how you feel you’ll meet the same fate as her, that you live every moment of your life as a mother yourself planning for a time you’re not around so your kids never have to go through what you go through, and never have questions they can’t get answered.
In the After, you become a planner… of everything. You don’t need to save so much for college because your life insurance will cover the expense of it – because you convince yourself that your kids will be in the same cycle that you were thrust into at fifteen, which also happens to be the same cycle your own mother experienced at eleven. You write journals for grandchildren you will never get to meet, spouses you will never know, and you try to capture every thought, opinion, memory, as if you can somehow bottle the essence of a single person for another to hang onto when they pass.
So what happens when the After is now something different – it’s not a death, but new beginning?
I hadn’t planned for this After… the one where I lived to see my children become adults in a way my mother and grandmother never did.
Mustard Seed Mama 