I Saw a Younger Version of Myself

I hope she saw me, too.

I saw a younger version of myself in the library parking lot yesterday. Of course, it wasn’t actually me. But it could have been. I was walking out, stack of books in hand, with my lanky 12 year-old son, who is quite nearly as tall as me. He was preoccupied. Chatty. As the eighth of ten children, he basks in these little one-on-one errands, and so do I. I listen a lot on these little outings. I ask careful, open-ended questions but mostly, yes— I listen.

What I was listening to at that moment was a soliloquy on why the Entmoot was more significant than the Council of Elrond in the Lord of the Rings. I do not agree, but his thoughts were cohesive and his argument compelling. He is a winsome speaker, this boy feeling his way into manhood. Winsome and thoughtful, with a slight flair for choosing to set himself just outside the norm. I’ve seen this play out several times before and I know the years ahead will shape him, and me, for the better.

Caught up in my son and the Ents, I could have missed the woman dragging an oversized stroller from the rear of her late model wagon. But I realized she might need help, so I paused. In doing so, I met myself.

The stroller, it became evident, was for a third child. She had an infant already wrapped firmly to her chest, and a wide-eyed kindergartener was standing near an open rear door. Still confined to the car seat inside was a little boy who was clearly making his way from toddler to preschooler. The mother unlatched him, then, without giving him the option, hoisted him from the seat to the stroller. She kept her hand firmly across his lap as she wrangled the straps over his shoulders. I recognized the signs of a woman who had learned her lesson with this particular child; he was not one to be trusted in parking lots.

The whole time, the little girl kept her hand resting on the stroller. A good, responsible firstborn. Her hair was done in two long braids and a pair of brown boots peeked out from under the hem of the long red dress tucked under her winter coat. I gauged that she was in her Little House era. The baby was clearly asleep, and mom moved confidently. The physical demands of the season were a known quantity. Car door closed, they returned to the open rear hatch and the mom hoisted out an oversized canvas bag. Its straps fitted just perfectly over the long bar of the stroller, but clearly made it prone to tipping back and much harder to push. Just seeing it, I could recall the weight of our own communal library bag back when there were so many books about Native American tribes and crafts to do with cardboard and how to draw horses stuffed inside.

I didn’t say anything to the mother as she passed. My son was still talking, oblivious. This little family tableau meant nothing to him. He was born the year his oldest sister got her learner’s permit. His memories of library trips as a small child all included the 12 seater-van we were headed to now: much too large for the family that we have today, but paid off and therefore, still in use despite being outsized for himself and the five siblings who somehow only seem to be going the same direction on Sunday mornings, for church. I smiled at the mother, and she smiled back. Her eyes held the physical tiredness I remembered from those years of always adding, always assuming that the next year might bring a new baby.

But in her eyes, I also saw the excitement I remembered from that season. That awareness that I was engaged in something just a little above my head, something to which I had given myself over. I remember my faith of those years, and the raw hunger that was never satisfied with the tiny snippets of the Word I managed every day. I remembered being lonely in it, wanting to find people who had that same flame for Jesus being stoked under their skin. I remember discovering homeschooling—not the action of it, but the radical idea that we could do things differently. And I remembered the sense that it would last forever.

It didn’t, of course. I turned 28 the fall my first children were 5, 2, and 6 months. I am 50 now, and those first three are grown, flown, married, touching base with me via text or phone call or video chat. The days when I bundled them into the library to load up on distractions that would make the long days shorter seem somehow so far away and also close enough to touch, which is I suppose the magic and the mystery of motherhood. Even walking beside the boy who will soon enough be a head taller than me, I could feel the swiftness of time and the peculiar kindness of a loving Father who understands how to pace the life of a finite, fallible mother’s heart.

We got in our van, the two of us in the front, the rest of the vehicle empty and echoing. I suppose I could have felt deflated at that moment. I could have set my eyes on what was, and mourned. But I didn’t. Instead, looking in the seat next to me at the animated face of my fifth son, I saw the past and the present all blended together, working towards a future even more rich that the one I currently know.

No, there will be no more days when I must sandwich a library trip between naps. No more deciding if I can postpone stopping to pick up something at the store on the way home because unloading everyone into a shopping cart at the grocery store sounds too daunting on this day. There is no more newness to the idea of teaching a child to say “mama,” or to read, or to decipher the pattern in a series of math formulas. The bulk of that has slipped through my fingers, though I still have a young one at home.

In its place is something I couldn’t see coming when I was untwisting car seat straps and reading Sandra Boynton’s board books on repeat: today. Today has a daughter-in-law who confirmed that they’ll be coming for Easter dinner, and a son reminding me that he needs a new white dress shirt for his coming symphony concert. It has a granddaughter with a cold who needs prayed over, and an aging stepmother in the hospital who might just come home tomorrow. It has science experiments that involve bunsen burners and a teen driver who needs reminding to pay his car insurance.

Today is full. Not in the same way it was when I was pregnant, carrying a baby on my back, pushing a stroller, and holding a child’s hand… but in a whole other way.

I’m glad I saw myself in the library parking lot. It was an encouragement, a reminder of God’s grace. But you know, I hope the younger version of me saw who was passing by, as well. There was encouragement waiting there for her, too. Maybe she noticed that there was a message behind the smile I offered, and it was this: “Enjoy where you are, friend. But don’t be afraid when it starts to change. God has good things waiting in every season. Just you wait and see!”

In Christ,

Heather