I Never Got To Go

You cried in the car and you told her it was because you were proud.

That was true. It was not the whole truth, and the other part of it arrived about ninety seconds later on the road out of that town, and it was not something you could have said in a car with her in it.

You wanted this. Forty years ago you wanted this, specifically and concretely, and it was not possible, for reasons that were nobody's fault and that you have never once held against your own parents.

And you have not thought about it properly in decades. And then you drove your daughter to it.

Here is the sentence that has been going round since, and it is worth putting on the page because it has been circling unformed: I am glad for her and I am grieving for me, and being glad does not make the grieving go away, and I am ashamed of the grieving.

That is the whole of it. And the shame is the part that is wrong, and it is the only part that is wrong.

Which dwelt first in thy mother

There is a line in Second Timothy about where a thing came from, and Paul goes back two generations to say it.

When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. (2 Timothy 1:5, King James Version)

Which dwelt first.

That is a sentence about origin, and it names two women whose own lives are almost entirely unrecorded. We know nothing about what Lois wanted, or what was available to her, or what she was not able to do.

What the verse says is that the thing living in Timothy was living in them first.

You are the place a thing dwelt first, and a mother who never got to do it has never once been outside the story of the person who did. Second Timothy 1:5 traces the origin backward through two women and names them, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a car on the road out of a town.

Now the direction of that sentence, because it is the opposite of the one you have been running.

This has been read one way since the car: she got what I did not. Which is true and which is a comparison, and comparisons produce shame in the person who came off worse.

The verse reads it the other way round: the thing in her dwelt in you first. She is not the person who got what you did not. She is the place where the thing that has been in you for forty years is now standing.

You have a wanting that did not die and is now four hundred miles away in somebody else, and forty years of not getting something have never once meant that the wanting was wasted. The written word runs the line backward from the young to the old and names the women, and the Spirit of God is the one who reverses a comparison into an inheritance.

The grief is not disloyalty

Now let me deal with the shame directly, because it is the only part that needs treating.

The shame is there because the grief has been quietly filed as belonging to a worse version of yourself. A woman who resents her own daughter. A woman who cannot simply be glad.

That is not what grief is.

Grief is what happens when a thing that was real is looked at properly. And a wanting that was strong enough to still be there after forty years was clearly extremely real, and driving to the place where it lives was always going to open it.

None of that is directed at your daughter. Not one atom of it.

You are grieving a thing and not resenting a person, and a forty year old wanting has never once been the same as begrudging anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a grief from a resentment, and Second Timothy 1:5 names the older women without embarrassment about what their lives did or did not contain.

And here is the second thing, and it is the one that matters for the two of you.

If it stays unnamed, it will come out.

Not as resentment. As something worse and much quieter: an over interest. Asking too much. Wanting the reports. Being disproportionately affected by how it goes for her. Because an unlived thing that is watching a lived one wants to be close to it, and closeness of that kind is a weight on a nineteen year old that she will feel and will not be able to name.

Not having got something is not a verdict on a woman.

You are able to keep it out of her year by naming it in yours, and a thing that gets said out loud has never once had to come out sideways. 2 Timothy 1:5 puts the origin plainly and leaves the older women whole, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman own her own grief so that her daughter does not have to carry it.

Tell her one true thing and stop

So here is the thing to do, and the stopping is where the whole craft is.

Tell her one true thing about what you wanted at eighteen. And stop before you draw any comparison to her.

One true thing. Concrete. What you wanted, and what it was like to be told it was not possible. In four or five sentences. Not the whole of it, not a life story, one true thing.

You are able to say what you wanted at eighteen, and forty years of not mentioning it have never once been the same as being at peace with it. It is written in Second Timothy 1:5 that the faith dwelt first in two women whose own lives went unrecorded, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen when a mother says something true about her own eighteen.

Then stop. Before the comparison.

This is the part that will be nearly impossible, because every one of these sentences has a natural ending attached: and that is why I am so glad about your year. Or: so make the most of it. Or: not that I mind.

Every one of those turns your history into an instruction, and instructions are heavy, and she will feel it as a debt.

Say the true thing. Then talk about something else entirely. Let it be information about her mother rather than a lesson about her own year.

You are able to give her a fact about you rather than a duty about her, and a story with no moral on the end has never once been received as a bill. Scripture names Lois and Eunice and never once tells Timothy what he owes them, and the same Spirit who left it there is in your kitchen when you stop talking.