The little girl and her mother enter the sandwich shop together, hand in hand. She has clearly dressed herself this morning, as she’s sporting a fluffy tulle skirt over a floral dress and glittery shoes, with accessories galore. She helps her mother order and then finds a table for them. When her mother brings over their sandwiches and discovers that they need napkins, the mother tells the little girl where to go to get some.
The little girl twirls over to the counter. “Here?” she asks.
“No, just down there a ways,” her mother instructs.
The little girl skips a few feet down. “Here?” she asks again.
“Just a little ways farther. Right before you get to the soda fountain,” the mom replies.
The little girl flits over to the spot on the counter where the napkins rest. She grabs a handful and shimmies over to the table next to her mother, where, mission accomplished, she sits and takes a bite of her sandwich. The two then begin sharing fanciful stories and discussing all of the fun things on their agenda for the day. It is clear that they delight in one another’s presence.
That’s when it hits me – as the stranger at the table behind theirs – my little girl will never be little again. She is, in fact, a high school graduate, now in college. My once-upon-a-time ballerina is twirling off on her own grand adventure, and those days of taking her everywhere with me, showing her where to find the napkins, are over.
I look down at my Mediterranean Veggie Wrap and take another bite, trying to force my tears back down. I know this is a good thing. This is a very good thing. We raise our children so that they can grow up and get their own napkins and make their mark on the world.
I smile as I taste the spicy hummus, reminiscing about those days discovering what a feisty little girl God had given me. The nine-month-old who yelled at the squirrels who kept snatching up the strawberries in our poor little garden: “No, no, squirrels! Them’s mine!” Her first sentence, said to a waiter at a Mexican restaurant when she was not even a year old: “Need more salsa!”
I cherished all the times she mispronounced ladybug licklebug (and heaven help the poor soul who tried to correct her). Or the time my mom showed her a VeggieTales DVD where Bob and Larry learn about selfishness. When I asked her what the video taught her, she replied, “It teached [sic] Bob and Larry not to be selfish. It didn’t teach me anything.”
I adored the little-princess phase where she changed her clothes five times a day just for fun. How she started every story with “once a ponce a time . . . .” Or her fifth birthday party, where she was Sleeping Beauty and her five boy cousins were knights. How her cousin Gavin said to her, “You have to wear a princess dress. We get to wear armor!” To which she promptly responded: “Yeah? Well, I have a wand, and I can turn you into a toad with it!”
I loved how she got so excited about running errands and taking walks and reading books and doing crafts and baking together. Or just how she saw the world in general. She once told me, “Hubcaps are just like toenail polish for cars.”
One day, she asked about what it meant to enjoy the small things. She must have heard the expression somewhere. So I tried to explain: “Small things are like having ice cream, going out to lunch with your grandmother, or finding treasures at the dollar store.”
Her response? “Those aren’t small things. Those are huge!”
Hanging out with such a young, innocent child was so fresh to me, like the tomato and cucumber in my wrap – healthy, life-affirming. But I also enjoyed the stages where she grew into a beautiful young woman.
Shopping together and introducing her to my favorite romantic comedies was like getting another chance to relive my youth. Or going to the gym together after school, working out on side-by-side treadmills; and that one day, how we dashed out to the car in the pouring rain, drenched to our very bones and laughing hysterically at how we looked in the visor mirrors. (Selfies were snapped!)
Our Summer of Austen, where she met my favorite characters and the ones I love to loathe as we watched my favorite movie adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, was nothing short of magical. Or the hours and hours of discussions we had on faith, culture, beauty, and what it means to be a woman – all of this on car rides to and from school.
There were onion moments too, where we both cried over mean girls, confusing boys, and hard things, but plenty of oil to balance out the vinegar. And loads of laughter, a great antidote to when we were feeling a bit crumbly, like the feta in my wrap.
But what was happening over those years was more than just a mother taking care of her child or a child growing up. What is happening just now at the sandwich shop is more than just a mother and her little girl having lunch. What is happening, in a word, is nurture.
We nurture our children, and they grow up to nurture us. We nurture our bodies with delicious food. Like this wrap, where these varying ingredients are hugged – if you will – by a spinach tortilla. This tortilla rolled up in a wrap shows us what it means to nurture and to encourage, as it supports all of these other ingredients and provides nourishment for us.
We don’t have to look far to see that people need nourishment. We all need nurture. Even those of us who have been adults for quite some time. Even those of us who are the nurturers. We all need it. And here’s the exciting thing: we have a mission, you and I.
When we look around and see so many needs and feel discouraged because we can’t fix all of the problems, there is something we can do. We can nurture those under our care in our homes, but even further, we can provide that care to those we encounter outside of our homes too: while running errands, in the workplace, in our churches, in our neighborhoods. Everyone could use a smile of acknowledgement, a sign that someone else sees them and cares about what they’re going through.
1 John 3:16 tells us, This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
The love I have given to my daughter throughout the years can live on in our relationship, and it can grow stronger and stronger. But I don’t have to, now that she’s grown, shrivel up and feel like I have no more love to give. Quite the opposite!
I finish the last bite of my wrap and take a sip of my drink. I am satisfied. I am nourished so that I can then go out and nurture others. I walk to the trash can and dispose of my used napkins and sandwich paper.
The best way to receive love is to give it away. This, for me, has been the secret of motherhood. And I wonder if it may be the secret to living fully in other areas of life as well.
I smile at the cashier and tell her to have a good day. I take a step out of the clear glass doors and am greeted by the sunshine. All of those bright rays glistening like endless possibilities to share God’s love.
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