Five Minute Friday: What Mama Did

Five Minute Friday:  "What Mama Did"




She was there.

I specifically remember sixth grade.  The year of an onslaught of hormones and mean boys and feeling incredibly uncomfortable inside my own skin. 

I wanted to hide away from the world until I got to the other side of that awkward adolescent year.

I didn't know anyone in my class that year.  The teacher was unfamiliar in my small town where everyone knew everyone--it was her first year there.  My own body and all that was happening was unfamiliar, and I was not graceful in the change.

I remember the end of those school days.  Those awful school days.  I would wait in that school yard, underneath those hundred year old trees, searching for the refuge of my mother in our hunter green van. 

I would climb in, so relieved to be somewhere safe.  And my mom would turn around, a smile on her face, and she would hand me an ice cold glass of sweet tea.  In a mason jar.  With a straw.

I loved sweet tea in much the same way that I love diet coke now, and she knew that.

And when my eyes swelled up from my horrible allergies, and I was a sight, not a good one, she curled my hair and applied a tasteful amount of make up to my swollen face to lessen the "damage" and even made appointments with allergy specialists.

And she was there.

She knew about the mean boys and the crazy, uncomfortable 11 year old changes...and I felt like a very young eleven year old on the inside, which only added to the confusion, and she didn't try to make it all go away.  She didn't go talk to the teacher about the mean boys or even try to make it seem unimportant or not a big deal.  She was just there. 

And she brought sweet tea in a mason jar.  And it helped.

p.s. oh how I wish I could now post my sixth grade school picture.  The very picture my mom took to the allergy specialist to show the doctor just how bad it could be ;)  I think that was the picture that went in the yearbook that year, which was just so appropriate.