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“I’m trying to start there.”
At the cars, she paused. “Do you still have coffee?”
“Coffee, tea, and probably expired cereal.”
A tiny smile appeared. “I can stay for a little while.”
“I thought I’d feel better.”
At home, I opened the cedar box I had kept for twenty years.
Inside were her hair ribbons, her favorite red shoes, a pancake recipe card, and missing posters worn soft at the edges.
“I kept what I could,” I said. “Proof that you were loved.”
Tara touched the ribbon and cried.
***
Later, my daughter sat at my kitchen table and cried with one hand over her mouth.
I stayed across from her.
“Can I sit closer?” I asked.
“Proof that you were loved.”
She wiped her cheek. “Not yet.”
“Okay.”
After a while, she looked at the cedar box. “You really kept all this?”
“Every piece I could.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed proof you were real when everyone else wanted me to move on.”
Her face crumpled again. “I don’t know how to be your daughter.”
My tears fell.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I don’t know how to be your mother at twenty-eight yet.”
“You really kept all this?”
The next morning, I made pancakes.
The first one burned. The second one tore. By the third, Tara walked in wearing my old sweater.
“You’re crying into breakfast,” she said.
“I’m adding salt.”
A tiny laugh escaped her.
For a second, I saw her at eight years old. Then I saw the woman she had become.
Both hurt.
A tiny laugh escaped her.
“You used to ask for the smallest pancake first,” I said, sliding a plate toward her.
“I don’t remember if I liked them.”
“That’s okay. We can find out again.”
She took a bite and chewed slowly.
“Still too much vanilla,” she said.
Her smile faded, but not fully.
Then she set the fork down. “I’m not ready to call you Mom.”
The words hurt, but they were true.
“We can find out again.”
“Then call me Cassidy,” I said. “That’s enough for me.”
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