She Wants to Know My Story
By Rachel Nevergall
@rachelnevergall
"If you could be any character in a book, Mommy, who would you want to be?" Caroline, my eight-year-old asks, bouncing down the sidewalk beside me, her hand on the edge of the stroller I push. Her five-year-old brother, Elliott, runs up ahead, kicking a chunk of ice which offers entertainment to their two-year-old brother Leo in the stroller.
My walks these days are nothing like they were pre-pandemic. Before, when Caroline went to school in a classroom, walking with the two younger boys was my moment of solace—Leo strapped into the stroller and Elliott a half block ahead of me on his scooter—I kept ear buds in to listen to a podcast or a book, but sometimes I just put them in and listened to nothing but my own heartbeat. The headphones and the movement were a cue to the kids that I needed quiet. Occasionally the boys would interrupt my thoughts to point out something new they spotted, like a spring flower popping up out of the grass or the sound of a bird they didn’t recognize. But mostly, the change of scenery around them was enough to engage their wandering minds, so I could wander with mine.
But Caroline has always been different. My headphones trick never worked on her. When we walk, she talks. She tells me about the latest book she is reading or about a story idea she has. She analyzes which shade of blue is her latest favorite and her party plans for her birthday eight months from now. She skips her little legs along as fast as her mouth can speak and when she senses I’m being too quiet—too distant—and she wants more of me, she’ll hold onto the stroller to slow us down. Then she starts asking me questions.
***
When Caroline was born, motherhood didn’t land in my lap the way I thought it would. I assumed my role as a mother would arrive as neatly packaged as the expertly swaddled baby they placed in my arms after giving birth. Here’s your baby, now you’re a mom. Instead, I found myself standing on the curb of the hospital waiting for my husband to pull the car around, awkwardly balancing the weight of a car seat along with complicated feelings of grief over the self I left behind and insecurity in who I was becoming. I wondered if maybe a mother wasn’t handed a new identity the way she was handed a formula sample at the pediatrician’s office. I wondered if she had to search for it.
And so I went for walks.
I would stuff Caroline’s squishy infant body into a pale pink snow suit and slip a bunny hat over her head before strapping her to my body with a baby carrier. Then I would walk down the two flights of stairs of our condo building and decide where we were headed. Some days I’d walk to the Chicago "L" train platform just around the corner, sit in a crowded passenger car headed 30 minutes downtown, and disguise myself as one of the commuters headed to work. Other times I might let my mind wander in the art museums on free admission days or stroll the lakeshore path, sandwiched between the towering buildings on one side and the crashing Lake Michigan waves on the other.
As spring approached, I found myself staying closer to home. I would walk up and down the streets of our neighborhood, looking for signs of changing seasons, hoping it meant I was changing, too.
By that point, I learned eight-month-old Caroline was happiest when I faced her out, so she could see where we were going—see what I saw. I would point and narrate while we walked, and in turn discovered growth in our neighborhood I hadn’t paid attention to before—the daffodils along the neighbor’s fence, forsythia bushes at the end of an abandoned lot, the cherry trees in the park with their flowers that decorated the ground with bubble gum snow. Maybe it was just an exceptionally beautiful spring that year. Maybe it was because she was finally sleeping through the night, so my mind was less foggy. Or maybe I was growing to see the world the way a mother does, through the eyes of her child.
Our walks continued like this for years, moving from the carrier to the stroller. By her preschool age, when she had developed words of her own and could ask me questions, I learned why she was so happy facing out. She was curious. Though, it wasn’t necessarily a curiosity about the world she saw in front of her, but rather a curiosity with how I saw the world.
What did you ask for Christmas when you were a kid?
What was your favorite birthday party?
Who was your favorite teacher?
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Like her voracity to consume stories in books we read, she wanted to know my story, too. Our walks became her way to search for it.
***
Caroline’s question of the day lands just as we approach a busy intersection. We wait for the traffic light to indicate it’s safe to cross, and I allow the noise from the passing cars to fill in the conversation gap while I think of an answer. Which book character would I want to be? I take a deep breath, trying to hide my fatigue. Often by the end of the day, when I’ve had too much sound, too much touch, too much of everything, her questions exhaust me. But today, I try to be patient. I want to give her an answer—to give her more of me—while I still can.
There is a shifting season upon us, but not one we can spot on our daily walks. We just received word from our school district that the two older children will return to in-person school next month for the first time in nearly a year. My role as their mother is changing. They will need less of me during the day. I’m feeling many unnamed feelings, but one of them feels a bit like grief. I felt it toward the end of my maternity leave and when I finally left my career after only a few months as a working parent. I felt it at the first preschool drop off and during Kindergarten orientation. I felt it every time I brought a new baby home to meet their older siblings. Change—a little bit like hope, a little bit like loss. Once again I’m standing on a curb balancing the weight of many unknowns, wondering who I am to become.
The light turns green and we cross the street. I decide to offer her one of the deflecting responses I use in these moments when I lack an answer. "I don’t know, sweetie. I’ll have to think about that. What about you? Who would you want to be in a book?"
Caroline wastes no time launching into her analysis. She skips her little legs along as fast as her mouth can speak, walking me through the many different books and book characters she loves, weighing the pros and cons of each, seemingly changing her mind as quickly as the thoughts arrive. I realize she is just as lost for an answer as I am, but it doesn’t seem to slow her down. Her curiosity keeps her moving forward.
We’re almost home but I want more—more time, more conversation, more of her. So I steady my hands on the stroller and slow my pace, allowing more time for us to keep walking. And then I listen to her explore who she would want to be in a book, curious to know if her story might help me learn more about my own.
Guest essay written by Rachel Nevergall. Rachel lives in Minnesota with her teammates—husband Mike and three children. She is the curator of family adventures, lover of all of the library books, mixer of fancy cocktails, and writer in the in-between. She shares her stories as a regular contributor at Twin Cities Mom Collective, other online publications such as Coffee+Crumbs, The Kindred Voice Magazine, and Kindred Mom, as well as on her own blog.
Photo by Lottie Caiella.