Saturday Soul: Somewhere in the Middle

This week, I’m home in Iowa. The place where I grew up, the place where I raised my kids, and the place that holds so many versions of me. Being back this time feels a little different because I get to sit back and watch some of the life I once lived happening right in front of me.

I’ve been watching my daughter Danielle move through her days as a wife and mom. Laundry, meals, baths, daycare, work, getting everybody where they need to be and keeping a household moving while two little people depend on her for just about everything.

I love watching her. She’s a good mom. A really good mom. She takes care of what needs to be done and still finds room for the little moments with her kids that matter.

I know these days well. I remember the laundry that never seemed to end, the meals, the schedules, the busy mornings and the long days. I remember being exhausted at night and still having things that needed to be done. I remember the little voices, the hugs, the laughter, bedtime and all the funny things kids say that you swear you’ll never forget.

I also remember the things people didn’t see. I worried. I worried about whether I was doing enough, whether I was spending enough time with my kids, whether I was getting this whole motherhood thing right while also trying to keep everything else together. There were days I cried because I was tired. There were days I felt completely overwhelmed. I could love my family with everything in me and still admit that raising children was hard. Both things were true.

Watching Danielle now gives me a different appreciation for those years. I know what goes into the life she’s building because I’ve lived it. I’m proud of her, but I’m also proud of the younger woman I was. I spent plenty of time questioning myself back then, and I can say now that I didn’t need to have everything together. My children didn’t need a perfect mother. They needed me, and I was there.

The laundry got done eventually. The house wasn’t always perfect. Every decision wasn’t the right one. Everybody survived, and there was a whole lot of love in that house.

Now I get to experience those years from a completely different seat. I’m Gigi.

Lorelei is talking up a storm, and one of my favorite things to hear is her little voice saying, “Watch me, Gigi!” And I watch. Every single time. Then there’s Archie and that smile of his. That baby can light up an entire room.

Being their Gigi is different from being their mom. I’m not carrying all the responsibility Danielle carries. I get to sit a little longer, watch one more thing, give another hug and laugh at something that probably isn’t nearly as funny as we think it is. I know how fast these years go because I’ve already watched my own children grow through them.

When you’re trying to get through Tuesday, you’re not thinking about how much you might miss Tuesday thirty years later.

And here we are.

Saturday, our family will sit around a table eating pizza and celebrating Zach turning the big 30. “Thirty”. I can look at the grown man in front of me and still see my little boy. I don’t think that ever leaves a mother. Your children grow up, build their own lives and become adults, but you carry every version of them with you.

My parents will be sitting at that table too. Their children, their grandchildren and now their great-grandchildren will all be together. They’ve had the same view I have now, just from one generation farther down the road. They raised us, worried about us, watched us grow up, watched us leave home and watched us build families of our own. Now they get to watch their grandchildren raise children.

That’s a lot of life around one pizza table.

And right in the middle of it is me.

I’m still somebody’s daughter. I’m Danielle and Zach and Cole’s mom. I’m Lorelei and Archie’s Gigi. All three are true at the same time, and I love that.

Getting older hasn’t meant leaving earlier versions of myself behind. I still carry that Iowa girl with me. I carry the young woman building a life. I carry the tired mom who occasionally cried and then got up the next morning and did it all again. I carry the woman who built a career, raised children, made mistakes, loved hard, started over, laughed a lot and kept going. And now I carry Gigi too.

None of those women disappeared. I am all of them.

Tomorrow when we’re sitting around that table, I’m going to take a minute and look around. I want to look at my parents, my children and my grandchildren. I want to hear the conversations happening at the same time. I want to hear Lorelei’s little voice, see Archie smile, watch Zach celebrate 30 and look across the table at my parents and appreciate the fact that they’re sitting there with us.

And yes, I’ll be eating my Other Place pizza. Probably more than I should.

That’s family. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t quiet. It isn’t always easy. The moments that end up meaning the most usually don’t announce themselves when they arrive. They look like regular days. A birthday. Pizza. Kids talking. Grandparents watching. People laughing around a table.

I’ve lived enough life to know exactly how valuable that is.

At 56, I don’t feel caught between generations. I feel connected to all of them. I know where I came from. I know who I raised. And now I get a front-row seat as the love that was given to me keeps moving forward.

That’s a pretty beautiful place to be.

Happy Saturday Soul 💜

The Pacific44 Journal - ViolaGirl29 🎻💜

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