My Mother Couldn’t Teach Me to Shave My Legs, But She Showed Me the Power of Resilience, Grief, and Quiet Strength

The Girl in the Mirror

Oftentimes when I look in the mirror, I do not see the woman I am staring back at me, but the little girl that I was. Part of me remains frozen in time at the age of four, crying to my mommy about a cut on my knee. Sometimes I think this is a phenomenon I will grow out of, yet when I look in my moms eyes and watch her quickly blink the same thoughts away, I am reminded that I will always see that little girl in the mirror, and she will always be looking for her mom.

A Phone Call No Child Should Answer

My grandmother passed away when my mom was eleven years old. My grandpa made the phone calls to their family and friends the day after, though somehow forgot to call my grandmother's best friend. When she called the next day, my mom answered the phone. She asked where her friend was. She was worried — they called each other every day after General Hospital aired, but she hadn't called yesterday.

“My mom died yesterday,” my mom said.

As the other line erupted in hysterical sobs, incoherent anguish, my mom stood with the phone pressed to her ear, waiting for someone who no longer lived to tell her that it was okay to hang up.

Lessons I Never Learned

In the corner of a ninth grade girls' change room, I overheard some of my classmates' conversations. They compared their favourite shaving creams and exfoliators, and one of the girls said “you’re supposed to shave in sections, not straight up your leg”. 

The rest of the girls said “yeah, of course,” and I wondered what was wrong with shaving straight up. While I tried to remember if I had missed a lesson in health class, I picked up my stuff and went to change in a stall.

What My Sister Taught Herself

Years later, at a cottage for the weekend, I stood in the bathroom holding a tampon I didn't know what to do with while debating how badly I wanted to swim. 

“Jess,” my sister called before knocking on the bathroom door, “how long are you gonna be?”

“I think I’m gonna stay back, you guys go,” I said. 

After one beat of silence, she asked if she could come in. 

I opened the door.

Later, as we walked towards our friends waiting on the dock, I asked her who taught her how to use a tampon.

She shrugged. “I did,” she said.

Neither of us had been taught; none of us were.

Joy She Never Let Go Of

Though my mom lacked the full foundation of being mothered, she had an excess of experience on mothering herself.

From Mr. Dressup to Shaun Cassidy, the most prominent memories of my mom's life are all ones I am aware of. Through her stacks of photo albums, bins of vinyl records, and bags of vintage comics, she remains consistently and brazenly connected to all of the things that had brought her joy at one point or another, and she unapologetically allows these memories to continue to do so. I understand now that this too was something she was teaching me. I still rewatch Supernatural when I need comfort. Jensen Ackles has occupied the same corner of my heart that Shaun Cassidy still occupies hers. The things that brought me joy as a girl still bring me joy as a woman, and she never made me feel like they shouldn't.

Teaching Me to Hold Myself

She always reminds me that when I was a baby, she didn’t hold the bottle for me, but taught me how to hold the bottle for myself. How she grabbed my little hands, and placed them around the bottle in my mouth, and showed me what it is to take care of myself on my own. The same way she moved the cereal to a lower shelf in the pantry and the milk a lower shelf in the fridge on Friday and Saturday nights, so my sister and I could make ourselves breakfast in the morning on weekends.

The Story She Told Me on the Couch

On a day in high school I remember being particularly stressed, I ranted to my mom as an output I didn't want input from. As I complained to her from the couch, she told me a story from when she was my age, and felt the same. She told her teenage self to remember the moment, the seemingly neverending overwhelm, so she could calm herself with it the next time she felt that same feeling — reminding herself of the insignificance of her stress, proven by her inability to recall what had inspired it. She only remembers crying on the bus, the weight on her chest, but not the weight itself. She told me to do the same with the moment we were in.

The Mother Who Was Being Built

When I look in the mirror now, I still see the little girl. But something has changed in the way she looks back at me. She has been watching me hold myself through things — quietly — and I think she is starting to understand that the mother she has always been looking for was never lost. She was being built. In a pantry in the dark, on a bus alone, on the phone at eleven years old. Piece by piece, so that I would never have to find it that way myself. So that when I needed it, I would only have to reach.