Page 88 of Not Another Beach Read
"You know what?" I said, making sure my voice stayed light. "It's really nice that you want to protect your mom's feelings. But part of her job as your mom is to help you with scary things. Even if it makes her a little sad sometimes."
Noah considered this, his forehead scrunched in thought. "Like how you tell your mom stuff even when it's hard?"
I blinked, surprised. "Yeah, exactly like that."
"I heard her on the phone," Noah explained. "She said you're really brave because you talk about hard things in therapy."
Now it was my turn to study the dinosaurs with sudden fascination. Dr. Sharma would probably say this was a good opening to practice the communication skills we were working on, but it still felt weird to talk about therapy with a four-year-old.
"Therapy helps me a lot," I said finally. "It's like... having a special person whose only job is to listen and help you figure stuff out. Even the really confusing feelings."
"Like when you miss someone but you're also mad at them?" Noah asked with unexpected insight.
I looked at him, really looked at him, and saw the wisdom in his young face. "Exactly like that."
"I miss my daddy sometimes," he said, making his stegosaurus walk across the carpet. "Even though I don't remember him. Is that weird?"
"Not weird at all," I told him. "I miss my first mom sometimes too, even though things weren't always good."
"Where is she?"
I took a deep breath. "I don't know. She had problems that made it hard for her to be a mom. Kind of like being sick, but a different kind of sick."
"And now you have a new mom and dad," Noah said, with the matter-of-fact way kids stated enormous truths.
"I do. And they're really great." I smiled, realizing how easily those words came. How true they felt. "But that doesn't mean I stopped loving my first mom."
Noah nodded sagely, like this all made perfect sense to him. "Maybe I'll have a new Daddy someday, too. Hearts are really big," he declared. "Mrs. Jenkins at preschool says they have lots and lots of room."
"Mrs. Jenkins is very smart," I told him, blinking back unexpected tears.
Later, after Noah was tucked into bed and I tidied up the living room, I sat on our couch and pulled out my phone. There were texts from Zoe about the next day's trip to the beach for a photography assignment, from Mom asking if I needed anything from the store, and from Jenna with a picture of the finished macarons we made that afternoon.
I answered them all, then hesitated before opening my photo gallery. I scrolled past recent shots—my new friends at lunch, Eden chasing waves at the dog beach, Dad trying and failing to flip pancakes—until I found the one I was looking for.
It was one of the only good photos I had of Rachel, taken three years before during one of her better periods. She was laughing at something off-camera, her face open and beautiful in a way it rarely was. I showed it to Dr. Sharma, trying to explain the contradiction of loving someone who repeatedly abandoned you.
"It's okay to hold space for both realities," she told me. "The mother who loved you the best she could, and the mother whose addiction made her unable to be what you needed. Both are true."
I was doing a lot of that lately—holding space for contradictory truths. I could miss Rachel while embracing my new family. I could be angry at her choices while understanding her disease. I could move forward without erasing the past.
I closed the photo app and texted Mom.
Allison will be here at 9.
The response came almost immediately.
Mom: Perfect! Dad's making his famous Saturday morning waffles tomorrow so I'm picking up what he needs for those! I love you
Three simple words that I spent years rarely hearing, now casually offered multiple times a day. I still wasn't completely used to it.
Love you too
I was no longer hesitant about saying it.
When Allison came home back an hour later, exhaustion evident in the dark circles under her eyes, I made a split-second decision.
"Noah told me something I think you should know," I said, as gently as I could.
