12:34 a.m. mama

I think for most of my life, I’ve believed that my mom knows everything. Not just in the way little kids think their parents are invincible superpeople, but deeper than that. I believed she had life all figured out, that she had walked through every hard thing and come out with answers tucked into her pockets like tissues. That she was somehow beyond fear, beyond uncertainty, beyond the guessing game the rest of us are playing. But tonight, as I watched her on a long call with my brother, I realized something. She’s still learning, too. She’s just really good at pretending she’s not. And it stunned me, quietly but completely. Because I forget, all the time, that this is also her first life.

The other day, I was looking through my grandma’s old wooden sewing table drawers when I found photos of my mom in her early twenties. Her hair was dark and thick, cloaking her shoulders, and her eyebrows were dark and defined. Really, besides the hair chop, I don't think she's changed that much. Her eyes, kissed at the corners and doe-like, are still the same; her smile is still there. It's a shy, witty smile, like she's in on some funny secret that you don't know quite yet. I asked my grandma if she had more, and she pulled out a whole album of photos in her phone of my mom when she was three, when she was eight, when she was twelve, when she was my age.

I held the phone carefully in my hands, like it might crumble. I looked at the teenager her. There was something wide-eyed in her expression, like she hadn't yet learned to lower her expectations of the world. She had that same cheeky smile and this look in her eyes that said Just wait; I’m going to do something big.

She was seventeen once, too. She had dreams, worries, and insecurities she never said out loud. She turned eighteen for the first time. Got her first job. Made her first big mistake. Learned how to forgive herself. She married someone for the first time. She had a baby for the first time.

She’s turning 55 for the first time. She’s raising a daughter for the first time. She's watching her own mother age for the first time. She's watching wrinkles web her face for the first time.

I've been thinking about my mom at seventeen. She was once a naive teenager, thinking she knew everything. I think the hardest part to imagine is my mother in love. As someone who loves hugs, physical contact, and bold expressions of love, I'm a bit of the odd one out in my family. My whole family, especially my mom, is very reserved about their feelings. I wonder if at seventeen she dreamed of a future husband, someone who would always love her and protect her. I wonder what seventeen-year-old her would think of my dad.

I wonder if that version of her could have ever seen me coming. What would she think of the person I’ve become? Would she recognize her own reflection in the things I love, in the fears I carry, in the way I overthink the smallest things?

Sometimes I wish I could go back and meet her then. Sit with her on her bedroom floor, ask her who her favorite teacher was, what song she had on repeat, what she thought her life would look like. I think I’d tell her that she turns out okay. That her daughter will love her more than words will ever say out loud. That she’s going to do hard things, and beautiful things, and sometimes both at once.

It’s a tender thing, realizing your mother is still becoming. Still choosing. Still aching sometimes for things she doesn’t speak about.

She’s not just my mom. She’s a woman who once had my exact dreams, and maybe even some of my same fears. She’s a girl who kept going, even when it was hard. And somehow, she’s managed to give me the kind of love she didn’t always know how to give herself.

She’s still in her first life. Just like me.