Firsts
Photo by Meggin Tengberg
BY EUNICE BROWNLEE
The thing that amuses me most about motherhood is how much of it centers on celebrating not just milestones, but the first time our kids do something. When our kids are babies, it seems that those firsts are happening on an almost daily basis and it’s hard to keep up.
First solid food.
First tooth.
First steps.
I will never forget my daughter’s first night home from the hospital. We were discharged 36 hours after delivery and she. was. gassy! She cried. I cried. She screamed. I screamed in desperation. The more I cried, the more my mom told me to calm down, which just made me more hysterical. She told me that the baby could sense my stress and I just looked at her, with tears flooding down my face and said, “What the hell did I just get myself into?”
To this day, I cannot tell you what my daughter’s first words were, but I can tell you that her first swear word came tumbling out of her mouth when she was just over two years old. In the excitement of trick-or-treating, she and her friends were running door-to-door. She had her tote-style bag slung over her shoulder and as it filled with candy, it swung heavily back and forth as she ran. Eventually, the momentum pulled her to the ground, face first, and without missing a beat, she muttered “aw shit,” pushed herself back up and kept running.
First day of school.
First bike.
First tooth fairy visit.
No one tells you all the things you need to know when you first enroll your kid in school. There are forms and vaccinations and teacher selection and deadlines (all of which happen at a time of year that defies logic). There are back to school nights and ice cream socials and supplies lists and meltdowns in the middle of Target while shopping for said supplies. (I may or may not have abandoned a half-full cart in the middle of an aisle to haul my child kicking and screaming out the door).
The first time I had to advocate for my daughter with the school was when she was in second grade. A classmate had put his hand down her pants and squeezed her buttocks in class. I went into full momma bear mode while explaining to the (male) principal that I was absolutely going to accuse a seven-year-old of sexual assault, because that’s what it was. It was about the time that Taylor Swift sued a fan for doing the same, so I figured my point was well made, but I had to get the assistant superintendent involved. It wasn’t pretty. The resolution led to an introduction to KidPower, an organization that teaches kids safety skills from a place of empowerment and bodily autonomy instead of fear. Highly recommend.
First bra.
First locker.
First question of identity.
Middle school was a rough transition for us. I suppose the bad rap that tweens get is because it’s a rough transition for everyone, which leads me to believe that those who voluntarily teach this age of student are saints, but I digress. This was the first time that my daughter had been separated from the friends she’d been going to school with the prior six years. She initially gravitated toward the same types of kids as before (read: white, middle class, honor roll), but being in a more diverse school led her to connecting more authentically with a different group of friends. Unfortunately, the ones she chose had the common thread of a dad-shaped hole in their heart and collectively, they weren’t a great influence. There was a lot of spiraling into unhealthy places and when one went down, they sucked the others down like a black hole. It was the first time I had to tell her I had a very strong dislike for her choice in friends. She totally didn’t care. It was also the first time I wondered if my kid would make it out of childhood.
One day, my daughter came home from school to tell me that she had a boyfriend. I reminisced on the innocence of those middle school relationships and wondered if her definition of boyfriend was the same as mine at that age — the boy you hold hands with walking the halls between classes and who will begrudgingly dance with you at school dances. She spent a full week curating a box of his favorite things as a Valentine’s Day gift and I thought it was so sweet and thoughtful. He dumped her the next day and she came home to tell me what a punk he was.
First job.
First bank account.
First feeling of independence.
As a solo parent, I haven’t been able to provide my kid with all the things I wanted to give her. I’d had ideas of helping her buy her first car, but I should have known that my fiercely independent kid wanted to do this on her own, with her own money. She worked hard and saved, and as soon as she had the amount of money she needed, she shopped for cars. Not many kids can say they bought their dream car for their first vehicle, but she got such a screaming deal on it that my first question was “What’s wrong with it?” We soon changed our first alternator together to answer that question.
At the end of her sophomore year, my daughter had a complete crisis of future. She came home hysterical, screaming, “I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up, Mom!” Attempting to reassure her, I told her that I was in my 40s and still trying to figure it out, so there was no rush to decide. Unsatisfied with that answer (of course), she met with the school counselor, who set her up on a path to take her first college classes as concurrent enrollment with her high school studies. She’s on a path to complete her CAN in tandem with her high school diploma. Mom brag: she also just made the Dean’s List for the first time.
First apartment.
First election.
First time on her own.
I’ve mourned each of my kid’s firsts as much as I celebrated them. I knew with each passing first, that we were getting closer to the first time she leaves home, and that has been hard to bear. Then I realized that the firsts don’t ever stop. They just look differently as our kids get older. Whether pulling a first loose tooth or drying tears from a first disappointment, as moms, it’s how we show up for those firsts that matter.
Unfortunately for my daughter, that includes an embarrassing display of affection. If she chooses to become a mother someday, she’ll understand when she has her first kid.
EUNICE BROWNLEE has spent her career finding the balance between her left and right brains. She is a writer, speaker, and activist who is passionate about educating the general population around mental health, trauma, and abuse. A solo mother to a teenage daughter, Eunice has entered the phase of really enjoying a close mother-daughter relationship. Eunice’s work 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. Eunice and her daughter currently reside in Denver, CO.