Out of the Mouths of Teenagers

Being a full-time mother for nearly twenty-two years has taken my life through a constant maze of both confidence and apprehension.  Some days I feel as if I am almost getting this job right, and then the next day will be wrought with some unexpected hormonal crisis(theirs or sometimes mine, if I am to be honest) which will set me off-balance for a short while.  Like no other job in the world, motherhood will humble you down to the soles of your feet or lift you up higher than the ever-present mommy clip that you use to keep your hair from getting in your eyes.  It's just never certain when the highs or lows will occur, or what might send your heart reeling with absolute emotion.

A few days ago, my littlest Angel Daughter called me on the phone when she was at home and I was still at our beach house.  We talked and laughed in only the way that mothers and daughters can, and then she told me that she had written another poem.  This young girl, with the dancing spirit, can also write the most heartfelt and honest poems that I have ever encountered from someone so young.  At fifteen, a very difficult age for most, Angel Daughter Number Four expresses herself through both movement and word.  My father, her pop-pop, used to call her "the great observer" because as the youngest of four daughters, she would sit quietly absorbing everything that was going on around her.  She observed for quite some time and then she began using what she took in to become an outgoing and unique spirit.  In the past several years, I have watched this little girl grow into an amazing young lady who is wise beyond her fifteen years.  Yet, she is still a very typical fifteen year old who must assert her upcoming independence by letting her dad and I know that she is growing up.

So, as AD4 told me about her poem, she set it up by recalling a memory that had popped into her mind.  When our girls were younger and they were preparing, one after the other, to become a Bat Mitzvah, each one had to go through years of study in order to reach this joyous milestone.  As a result, we spent a lot of time in synagogue both on holidays and for Friday night Sabbath services.  It was a very cozy time in our lives when the girls were still young and family took precedence over all else.  For me, those years were more about the feelings that being a close family unit evoked, and not so much about the words.  And yet, I am sometimes awed by the descriptions that my Angel Daughters can attach to a certain memory.  AD4 asked me if I recalled how she would often lean up against my body during temple services.  She then told me that as she would rest up against my body, she would listen to my voice as it reverberated throughout my body and into hers.  Like in many religious services, the leader(in our case the rabbi or the cantor) prays or sings while the congregation participates by also praying or singing out loud.  AD4 described to me how my praying voice was something that she enjoyed listening to because it was very different from my "regular" voice.  As she described her experience to me, I got chills.  So many thoughts raced through my heart and my mind.  I wondered if the voice that she had leaned up against me to hear in synagogue to pray, was somehow the voice that she had remembered from a much earlier time.  A time when she was snugly ensconced so safely within my womb.  Could every word have sounded like a prayer to her?
As she read her poem to me, it was like a prayer reverberating throughout her body and into mine.  It wasn't so much the words that I heard(although they were beautiful), but the voice that she used when she spoke them to me.

Three of my youngest Angels are well into their teen years now.  My oldest is going to be twenty-two in about three weeks.  As they continue to grow up into the beautiful young women that they will be, I hope to hear more of their feelings put into words.  I understand that I have several more uncertain years as my girls continue to strive for independence fostered out of interdependence.  But as I continue on my journey through the maze of motherhood, I will try to remember that sometimes words actually sound like prayers when they are coming from a place that is rooted and deep and strange, but familiar.  Oh how familiar.