In my daughter’s eyes

I have tried today to turn my brain off.  Today is one of those “dates”. Every day is painful but there are going to be those “dates”.  I stayed in my pajamas today, no contact lenses and spent the entire day dozing on the couch with the dogs and CNN on in the background.  That is how I was coping today.  I feel like I am getting a cold so it was not hard to stay prone under a blanket on our old worn out couch.  I avoided social media as much as I could.  I don’t want to see what move in day looked like.  Hayley lived in the dorms her freshman year at Western Washington University with an amazing roommate.  Her roommate is starting her sophomore year as a Resident Adviser. She is already back at campus and I know she misses Hayley so much.  It must be so hard to be back at school and have Hayley not there.  Hayley and Kaylen, strangers a year ago.  For the last year of her life this girl from the other side of our state spent the majority of every single day in a room barely 10 feet by 10 feet.  Hay and Kay, the same names but for the first and last letters.  They were opposites in so many ways.  I honestly don’t know how Kaylen tolerated Hayley.  I think Hayley’s gift was to goad Kaylen out of her shell and Kaylen’s gift was to steady Hayley’s goofiness.  They really were the perfect match.

Hayley was so excited about living in a new Apartment building on the edge of campus.  It was a planned unit community for college students called Gather Bellingham.  They have other Buildings like this on other campuses.  She was so excited, that we had done all of the shopping for the apartment before her surgery.  I need to send items back but many of the boxes clutter the front room and hallway where they arrived.  I need to deal with these items.  I don’t want to.  Our toaster broke this week, so I reluctantly unpacked the very stylish turquoise chrome one I had bought for her.  It is okay, Henry likes it.  She would have her own bathroom and bedroom with a full size bed, cable, wifi, and they even allowed pets.  It was way too nice for a college student but I was so happy and excited for her and her friends.  She had plans for visits and sleepovers with her dog Zoey.  She had packed an inflatable bed with extra sheets for me to spend weekends with her.  She was allowed one glassybaby in the dorm.  She had already planned to have a shelf with three.  The one from her freshman year, one she chose from my collection and one that she had me find at the 2nd sale in June.  These colors were used at her service.  She was so full of excitement, enthusiasm and light about starting sophomore year.

We had spent some time in June when she came home sorting through some of the dorm load she had brought home.  She was certain we had lost a garbage bag of clothes.  I told her no way.  But I think we did, I can’t find her Seahawks jersey or stack of Western T-shirts that I want my cousin to  make into a quilt.  These are the things that can send me into a spiral of tears and sadness.  We sorted by “apartment”, “home bedroom” and “toss”.  We packed up apartment items, taped them shut and transferred them to our storage unit along with her mini fridge for her room that she said would be filled with Chocolate Milk and Rose`.  I rolled my eyes at the wine.  We ran out of time and energy.  There are still several bags and duffles in our spare room that have not been unpacked.  We had also gutted her teenage room.  Trophies packed away in the garage, bags of items taken to goodwill and the rest stored in the spare room while her Dad painted her bedroom for the 6th and last time in her life.  She wanted an adult room.  We purchased her new furniture.  We splurged on items that were sturdy, classic and furniture she would eventually take with her as she became a real adult after college.  We ordered new bedding for both her new apartment and her home room.  We both agreed on classic and beautiful (and on clearance) Pottery Barn bedding for both rooms.  I think I enjoyed this part more than her.  She loved everything.  It arrived less than two weeks before her surgery.  The accent chair actually arrived the day of her surgery.  She had plans for her friends to sit in that chair and binge watch TV with her during the two weeks she was recovering.  Instead Scott and I sat in the chair holding her hand and a barf bag in the last 48 hours of her life.  Being frugal as she was, we spent money on the piece that counted, her bed with built in storage drawers and drove to Ikea for a nightstand and a small ottomon the dogs could use to get up on her bed.  The guest chair was from Costco.  Our plan was to let her boss me around and continue putting items back into her room as she directed me from her bed during recovery.  She loved her new room, she said it was so peaceful and relaxing and she said Thank you to Scott and I several times.  I personally loved all her choices.  I had visions of sleeping in her room on those nights I was missing her or if Scott’s snoring was too loud.  I felt like it was our room.  I had visions of sitting in the chair by the window and watching her put her make up on or watching our shows while cuddled up on her gorgeous vintage bed with cozy new bedding.  Right now the door is closed.  Medical supplies from the two nights she was home are on the shelf.  Her laundry is in the hamper.  Her Birkenstocks and slip on vans are neatly lined up next to the closet.  A Minnie Mouse pillow pet is half falling off a shelf in the open closet.  The pink glassybaby named “baby” sits on the night stand with some of her bracelets.  Her iwatch, iphone sit in the drawer.  Above her bed is the vintage up-cycled sign we bought the day before surgery at Home Goods.  It says HOME.  I have found comfort in the room and I have found hell in the room.  I don’t know which will greet me when the door is opened so it has remained shut for a couple of weeks.  Henry no longer asks when he can move into the bigger room.  I doubt he will ever broach the subject again.  We live in a house full of emotional land mines.

A couple of weeks ago Henry asked to borrow my hair dryer.  I said we had an extra.  What I meant was let me go get Hayley’s out of her room.  I remember when we bought it.  She said “we can’t spend that much on a hair dryer”.  I told her this is the one Tara, our stylist, told me to buy.  I said you went from birth to 4 years old nearly bald.  Think of all the money I saved on kid’s haircuts and baby shampoo.  Now you have the thickest and softest hair, so we buy the good one.  Thankfully it was not pink, but black with purple accents.  I put it outside Henry’s door.  But for the next week I noticed he still came in to our bathroom and used my red hairdryer.  He didn’t quite close the bathroom door and I glimpsed him drying his pits and privates just like his Dad does after every shower.  I rolled my eyes.  I could have sworn I gave him Hayley’s hair dryer.  I went into their shared bathroom.  I started to shake.  All I could think is what a bad Mom I was, how selfish, caught up in my own grief.  I had not been in that bathroom since Hayley’s death.  Scott had cleaned the toilet a couple of times so at least it wasn’t a total Pit.  But I don’t think Henry really had been using it.  Spread across the counter like always was Hayley’s girl stuff.  Make up, brushes, eye liner, her toothbrush, her pills, jewelry, tampons and perfume.  She had totally tried to reclaim her bathroom and mark her territory by covering the most counter space possible.  Henry had been seeing that every day and didn’t say a word.  He didn’t put the items away in the drawer that was hers.  He just showered, did his business and dried his hair in my bathroom.  With shaking hands I closed the open “naked” eye palettes, I placed them and the other items in her drawer.  I thought about all the times she wouldn’t let me leave the house for events without re-doing my eye make up.  Because of the constant tears I wondered when I would ever wear eye make up again.  I thought about the story her beloved teacher told at the service about Hayley doing her make up for her many mornings.  Unlike me, Hayley was blessed with gorgeous, nearly blemish free skin her entire life.  She rarely wore anything but eye make up.  She truly had no idea how beautiful she was.  Her eyes did not see what I saw.  In the hospital, so many people commented on her gorgeous complexion.  I had hounded her all of her life to wear sunscreen.  Her Dad had survived Melanoma.  Evidently she had listened.  She would occasionally for entertainment mention going to a tanning bed just to see me freak out.  I tried not to let my brain think about how many people she would save and change lives for the better, with her tissue donations.  Burn victims and Breast Cancer patients, made whole again because of her generosity and her gorgeous body.  There are paths in my brain that I can only take a few steps down before I must retreat.  I can think of the donations in theory but if I take more than three mental steps down that path, the nightmares start.  I didn’t expect that part when we said yes.  I wouldn’t ever do it differently but I have to be honest those nightmares do happen.

Today would have been moving day.  When she returned home from school in June she went right to work.  We sat in a booth at the Cafe where she worked and we went over all of the expenses that it took to live at Gather and attend college.  We really did not do that Freshman year.  She got the worry gene from her Dad.  I wanted her to focus 100% that year on adjusting to her new life and let me worry about the money.  She asked if she should still have a meal plan at the campus cafeteria.  I showed her how to calculate how many times she might eat there and what it would cost per meal.  I asked her “do you want to spend 12 dollars on that food or get phad thai take out”.  She LOVED phad thai.  She quickly chose to be responsible for her own food.  She has always been great with money.  Living in such an affluent community was not always easy for our family as we dealt with financial set backs more than once.  At those times I felt like a failure, I wanted to provide her with the best.  What I realize now, was that it was those times that made her the responsible adult she was becoming in front of my eyes.  We were planning the Hawaii trip we have never taken.  We hoped it would be soon.  I told her we could do it as soon as I had spent 6 months at a new job.  Many kids her age in our community take for granted the expensive trips they take every year.  I don’t blame them, if it was in our budget, vacations would be the first luxury I would spend money on.  Some of our most cherished memories will be of our family trips to Cannon Beach, Disneyland and the boat trips she and I took with my parents on the East coast.  I will never forget the look in her eyes as several humpback whales breached around our boat near Cape Cod that summer before 5th grade.  I loved to surprise her with gifts or Amazon packages, and hand made care packages sent to the dorm.  Her roommate often called her spoiled.  In fact she was really worried that her roommate actually thought she was.  She was so far from “spoiled”.  She had a job since she was 16.  She often spent her money on practical things and gifts for others.  I passed on my love of finding the perfect gift for someone to her.  I told her a present that was for no reason and that had obviously been chosen carefully would be the ones the receiver would remember most.

One weekend she was home from school.  She had bought several boxes of fruit gushers from Safeway with her own money.  This was her go to snack.  She loved those disgusting little gummy liquid squirters.  Unfortunately so did her brother.  She marked them as hers.  He couldn’t resist, she came home from work to find several empty yellow wrappers.  OMG, you would think he had killed a puppy.  She lost her fruit gusher shit.  The temper tantrum she had that weekend would rank in the top ten of all tantrums ever.  It was ridiculous and insane.  I told her this, having to scream it so she could hear me.  At first Henry thought it was funny but it quickly spiraled into an epic battle of sibling hatred.  Screaming, swearing, stomping.  Over fruit gushers.  Both of them were completely off their rockers.  It was like trying to reason with toddlers.  I refused her demands to drive to the store and replace the ones he had eaten.  I told her I would put money in her account to pay her back for Henry’s offense, but that she could go to the store herself.  I ended up having to keep them separated as much as possible the rest of the weekend.  Scott and I gave each other a high five when she finally left to go back to school.  We knew it was not about the fruit gushers.  She was stressed and really struggling that first quarter to adjust. But we made sure she knew her behavior was not acceptable.  Henry and the missing fruit gushers were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The next night back when we faced timed as always, I proudly showed her a packet of fruit gushers she had missed.  I told her that Dad and I were going to enjoy them after dinner with a nice Chardonnay.  She tried to be mad at my obvious sarcasm but I could see that she was processing how ridiculous she had acted.  That next day to drive the point home, I filled a huge padded colorful envelope with about 4 dozen packages of fruit gushers and mailed them to her at the dorm.  No note, just a tightly packed envelope that when opened, the contents dumped out into a small mountain of yellow wrappers.  I received a text with a picture of this yellow pile with a very sincere apology for her behavior.  Parenting win!  When I packed up her dorm in June she still had the envelope in her desk and it was still half full.  I know that envelope must be in one of those unpacked duffles.  Tonight I was attempting to clean part of Henry’s room for him.  I really needed more than just a garbage bag, I should have been wearing a hazmat suit.  As I reached under his bed to pull out a used water bottle I was brave enough to look further.  There among some bent paperclips, a broken iPhone cord, some socks, and a paper plate was an empty yellow fruit gusher wrapper.  I cried and I laughed and said out loud “fucking fruit gushers”.

It was her responsibility this year to pay 25% of her college and living expenses out of pocket, including fruit gushers.  We would help with the rest.  Junior year it would be 40% and Senior year would be more than half.  That has always been the plan.  When I lost my job in April she told me she would do more.  I didn’t want that.  She could work all summer, take time off for her surgery, time off for a road trip she and I were planning.  She would then come home in December and have another 4 weeks to work.  Those 4 months would pay her part and allow her to focus on her course load. It was so satisfying to have such an important conversation with her.  To have her participate by asking questions.  It felt like a plan that we both had input on, it felt collaborative.  Trust me that was not a word I would have associated with my kid a year earlier.  A year earlier I had an emotionally scarred 18 year old that had just survived a really difficult year physically and emotionally.  She had been forced to learn lessons that should have waited until at least 25.  I didn’t want her to know at 18 that you can do everything right and still lose.  I didn’t want her to know that there were adults in positions of power that had no empathy for others.  I felt that could wait.  What came back after a year of college and lots of parental coaching was the most mature, thoughtful, kind, funny and generous human being.  I was shocked that she was mine.  I had such a short amount of time to admire this new young woman.  Despite screw ups by both Scott and I we had actually raised a decent human.  

To help out the family she had already decided in July that she would apply with her Aunt’s assistance at Alaska Air in Bellingham.  She planned to work part time to pay for part of our commitment so that I could take the summer off.  She said having me as a stay at home mom was the best.  I laughed, you are 19, it doesn’t count for you.  She said it did and she didn’t want me to start looking seriously for my next job until she was back at school. I told her we would discuss her working during school once we saw how she handled apartment living first quarter.  I promised to give her and Henry my full attention for the summer, she was thrilled.

I posted a photo tonight on Facebook of her and her dog Zoey.  I just stared at her eyes.  People call her my mini me.  But in those eyes I see both parents.  Her eyes are not blue like mine, they are brown like Scott’s.  She had the ability to socialize and communicate like me when it was required but preferred to be an introvert like Scott and stay at home with her family and her dog.  She was kind, funny, real, thoughtful, stubborn, thankful and at times a bad bitch.  Found that song on her playlists.  She would stand up for the underdog but didn’t want the spotlight on herself.  She could dance in front of crowds but sweated bullets when having to give a speech in her communication classes.  For friends, she chose carefully.  She went for quality over quantity.  If you were lucky enough to call her a close friend, you have to know you were so very special.  Figure out why and do more of that.  In her eyes I saw her hopes and her dreams.  I saw her shyness that she hid from others, I saw how much she loved her Dad and her brother.  I saw a child becoming an adult.  Her humor and her love were contagious.  I could not be grumpy when we were running mundane household errands because we had the car windows down and singing songs by Sam Hunt and SoMo.  She was unique.  I knew how much she loved to try to shock me.  She knew this was a big challenge as I don’t shock easily.  I learned to feign shock and censure to make her happy.  I am pretty sure her eyes saw right through me.

In my daughter’s eyes I saw her future, but I also saw my own.  I saw in those eyes my best friend, one of the loves of my life.  I knew I could continue to face obstacles because I had her by side.  She was my partner in crime.  In family squabbles, I saw that our house had the perfect balance of gender equality.  I don’t care how sensitive your husband is, only another female can truly understand what it means to be a woman.  In her eyes I saw hope for her generation.  I saw her career choice a way for her to make a difference and fight for those that could not fight for themselves.  I saw in her eyes the many years we had ahead.  I took those years for granted.  In my daughter’s eyes I saw reflected back at me the biggest accomplishment of my life.  I can only hope that I can do the same for my son.  He has his sister’s eyes.