The Little Things
Photography by Meggin Tengberg | Tengberg Studio
By Eunice Brownlee
Of all the things no one tells you before you become a mother, it’s how the little moments that annoy you will become meaningful when your kids get older.
When my daughter was early elementary age, she would always wake up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and the first thing she would do was come into my room and start chattering my ear off about something. At the time, it was likely Minecraft or Beanie Boos or whatever the fad of the week was. If podcasts had been as popular then as they are now, she could have easily done a four-part series on any topic before the sun came up.
I am not a morning person. And I am, admittedly, not exactly a kid person either. To have a little one encroaching on my Saturday morning snooze, the most sacred time of the week in my book, was rather annoying. I just wanted it to stop.
I did what any reasonable parent would do. I taught her how to make coffee. I told her that if she was going to wake me up on Saturday morning, she had better bring me coffee first.
The following week, I awoke as my little eight-year-old carefully tip toed into my room, trying desperately not to spill the over-full mug of coffee. The sheer amount of concentration she was putting in to keep all the liquid inside the rim was so cute, I couldn’t stand it. As she set it down proudly, I hugged her and thanked her and she climbed into bed with me, as she began her morning talkfest.
I picked up the mug to take a swig and fully expected it would be a terrible cup of coffee. But no, she nailed it. I was impressed. We snuggled and I listened to her talk about things I definitely did not care about.
After a while, instead of making me coffee, she would just crawl into bed next to me and cuddle. As she got older, she got less chatty and I really started to miss those mornings where she would word vomit on me while I was still half asleep. While I was convinced that I still did not care one iota about Minecraft or how many pots of slime she had made over the course of the week, I realized that it wasn’t about what we were talking about in those waking moments. It was just about the fact that she was sharing a part of her life with me.
When she stopped sharing the minutiae of her current interests with me as frequently, I started to get a little sad. Now we both slept in on Saturdays and I wondered if we were entering the phase of life where she would stop sharing things with me all together. I dreaded the day that I would be begging for her to let me in on her life.
A few years later, she took an interest in sneaker culture. To be specific, she became obsessed (and I cannot stress that word heavily enough) with Jordans. Our rare Saturday mornings were now sans coffee, sans snuggles, and spent with a phone shoved in my puffy-eyed face, showing me a variety of sneakers that, to me, were all ugly.
She would carry on about this style or that style and explain why this particular shoe was rarer (and therefore, more expensive) and then she would quiz me to see if I knew the difference between all of them. It was irritating and I know that I said, “Sweetie, I’m glad that you have an interest, but I really don’t care to know the difference between a six ring and an eleven,” more than once.
As much as I did not care about myriad details she was sharing with me about sneakers (and I was doing it without coffee), I let her talk while I sort of listened. She was sharing with me parts of her life that mattered, and I wasn’t sure when that was going to end.
Photography by Meggin Tengberg | Tengberg Studio
I knew that by the time she became a full-fledged teenager, all these seemingly meaningless conversations would inevitably come to an end. After all, that was when I stopped sharing details of my life with my own mother. I wanted to enjoy them as long as I could.
I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I’m a solo parent or if it’s just that I made time to listen to the chatter about stuff that I thought didn’t matter, but the conversations have not stopped. While she definitely has been more open with other kids’ parents than she has with me, she will still crawl into bed with me (some) Saturday mornings and share with me what’s going on in her life.
Sometimes those conversations happen while we’re driving around town, or while we’re making dinner together. They generally happen when I least expect it. I used to believe that my daughter didn’t talk to me all that much, but as I reflect on it, she shares with me a lot more than I ever did with my mother.
I know about her relationship with her boyfriend, the struggles that she’s having at school, or the funny thing that happened to her at work. I know how she feels about important issues, and I never cease to be amazed that she follows current events and has opinions on that too. We have really open conversations about the “taboo” topics — things I would never have dared to broach with my mom out of fear of rejection or admonishment.
We don’t spend near as much time together now as I would like us to. Mostly because she’s busy with work/school/social life, but the time we do get together is so rich and powerful because of these conversations.
I didn’t realize how important those small moments of babble would become. I haven’t lost them, not at all. Our conversations have shifted into meaningful dialogue, and we discuss important topics regularly. And of course, she still talks incessantly about sneakers, and when that comes up, I just smile and nod along.
EUNICE BROWNLEE has spent her career finding the balance between her left and right brains. She is a passionate writer and writes regularly about mental health, trauma, and abuse. She’s also a solo mother, striving to raise a daughter who is strong and outspoken. Eunice has been published in The Kindred Voice, Motherscope and Spoken Black Girl. Eunice’s current project is a book about the trauma of navigating the justice system as a victim of a crime. When she’s not doing any of the above, she can be found seeking her next passport stamp and drinking wine. Follow her on Instagram @eunicebrownlee.