You're always someone's baby

I laid everything on the table that I needed to disburse between TTT's backpacks and the still open suitcases. My mom saw the clock ticking away and was worried I wouldn’t get any sleep or enough sleep before my aunt’s “we need to be at the airport by 4:45AM” call time so she decided she would help me. But her help was messing with my flow and organization and my triple checking that everything we needed was either on the table or already in the suitcases.

So after I finally told her point blank that she wasn’t helping me, she saw the kids’ birth certificates on the table along with the my passport and said,

“You know you can’t leave those lying around. Are you sure you’re going to be able to keep up with them?” she asked.

Deep, deep breaths I took before I turned to look into her eyes. Did she miss the envelope the birth certificates were sitting on? Did she realize I was heading off to Seattle by myself, alone, with the three children under the age of six who call me mommy? Did she not know that I carried vitally important documents by myself on a flight from LA to Taipei from Taipei to Saigon and didn’t lose a single one? And I had to carry those documents all the way back on the return trip, but this time with an eleven-month-old who had only known me for not even two weeks? Okay, well maybe she didn’t know those last two things. But she did know that I managed to college in Northern Minnesota and Malta by myself and not lose anything important and came back in one healthy piece.

But I couldn’t say any of that, instead I said, “I’m putting them in the envelope they are sitting on. Yes, I’ll be able to keep up with them. I’m keeping them on my person.” She was just being a concerned mother. Because even though I’m a mommy of three, I’m still and will always be as long as she lives her baby. As maddening as she can be at times, I’m so blessed to have a mom that cares enough to ask questions, that loves me, and only wants the best for me. That I even have a mom that’s still alive because there are peeps my age who don’t. I’ll have to repeat this to myself the next time she drives me bananas.