Ordinary Memories
By Sonya Spillmann
@sonyaspillmann
The phone rings, it’s my daughter. She has called me from college, eliciting a response akin to the nervous excitement I once only felt for boys on the other end of the phone.
“Mom,” she says, I can hardly wait to hear what she’s going to say next, “do you want to go to Florida with me for spring break?”
Immediately, I reply, “Yes!” Which new college friend of hers owns a beach house, I wonder. And which other girls and their moms are invited to whatever they are planning?
“Who’s all going?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
I’ve already formulated an idea of what’s happening here: college freshmen want to go on spring break together, and my daughter knows I’m strict, and in her mind, I may only allow her to go if I know one of the parents or am, myself, there. And so, she is asking if I’ll go, thus allowing her to go. So I ask again, “Who all is going?”
Without missing her own beat, she says simply, “You and me.”
My heart swells. And while I adore her answer, I have no choice but to ask the next obvious question. “Who is … ” I take a deep breath, “who will be paying for this?”
She pauses. Then answers with such obvious confusion, it makes me laugh. “You.”
Ahhh, yes. Okay Daughter.
Without dampening the excitement of committing to an impromptu trip, but while also trying to temper this exchange with a bit of reality, I end the conversation telling her I’d love to go away together, but that I’ll need to “look into options” first.
We say our goodbyes and I immediately start looking up beach rentals within driving distance.
***
“Want to go to Target?” I ask my youngest son. I’m standing by the side door in the kitchen, putting on my shoes. He’d been hanging out in the living room much of the morning, reading a graphic novel he’s read what feels like 100 times.
“Sure,” he says, getting up and walking over. He gets his shoes on, then follows me into the van. He sits directly behind me. He’s almost old enough, and big enough, to sit in the front—but not yet. We drive mostly in silence, though I ask him a few questions about his soccer schedule and how he’s feeling about going to middle school next year. The trees along our route are spreading out their small green wings like a forest of butterflies emerging from their chrysalises. It’s one of my favorite times of year.
At the store, we walk side by side, but he doesn’t hold my hand like he used to. I have only a short list today, and after checking out, we stop at the attached coffee shop. Encouraging him to order for himself, he asks for an iced drink made mostly with creme and chocolate. I pay, he gets his drink, and we drive home chatting about anything and nothing.
***
I found a small rental in North Carolina, an easy drive from our home. It was a block off the beach, one bedroom with a loft. Best of all, the price fit the budget. The plan was that she would come home from spring break, enjoy some time with the whole family, then we would go away together for a handful of days.
And a part of me wanted to make this time together very intentional, something more.
“Do you guys know of any good Bible studies I could do with her?” I asked some friends. “Or maybe a book we could read together?” I don’t think I sounded desperate or anxious, but my guess is they could hear the longing—to make this time really count—in my voice.
It’s hard to explain what I’ve been processing in the last year, as my daughter walked through her senior year of high school and started her freshman year of college. But the short version is this: my mom died at the end of my own senior year of high school. I was motherless before I accepted my diploma and made the decision to live at home instead of going away to my dream school. Memories of my freshman year of college are full of grief and loneliness. Sending Nadia away to a college she was sad for me, of course, but living through this whole experience was nothing short of redemptive.
So to have her phone calls now, her interest in us spending time together, to have her and me—and me and her siblings—and our family intact, it means more than I honestly have words for. It’s like a glowing ember of thankfulness that will never go out in my heart.
And my friends know this.
“What if,” my friend Sarah—who is also a motherless mother—said, “what if you just go and enjoy her?”
With that one question, my shoulders relaxed. I had more room to breathe. I knew it was the right answer. No books, no overt efforts at spiritual formation, no unnecessary pressure.
“Sonya,” Sarah said with such kindness, “some of my favorite times with my mom were just ordinary memories.”
***
“Need to go to the bathroom?” I ask my youngest, who has reclined her seat back as far as it can go, something she can’t do when the car is full of her siblings. Her legs are up on the headrest in my peripheral vision. A movie—of her choice—is on the DVD player and she has a giraffe pillow behind her head. We’re driving home from a weekend where just she and I went to visit her grandparents.
“No, I’m good,” she says.
But I need to stop—it’s a six hour drive—so I ask, “Getting hungry?”
“Um…” I know she’s going to say no. Not that her answer could sway me from stopping, it’s just that I wouldn’t mind her being on board with getting out of the car.
“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts,” I say, hoping this will tip the scale.
“I could go for a donut,” she says casually. I’d never stop and get the kids a donut if we were all together. When it’s all six of us, our stops are efficient, tactical. Never indulgent or frivolous.
But what’s a trip somewhere with Mom if you don’t get a special treat?
After stretching our legs, she orders a chocolate covered cream stick, the kind that would make me sick within two bites. When we get back in the car, she places a napkin on her lap and the donut is gone before we are on the highway.
“That was good,” she says with such pleasure, it brings a smile to my own face.
Hours later, before we arrived back at home, she says, “This was the best day ever.”
“This weekend?” I ask, thinking she’d misspoke. The day before, Grandpa had taken her out to the small pond behind the house and showed her how to feed his koi fish by hand. She did what he said and the biggest fish circled, opened his lips wide, and gulped the food she held between her fingers, practically kissing them. She laughed, grabbed another pellet, and tried again. For nearly twenty minutes, the fish ate bite after bite, directly from her hands. The day before that, Grandma took her to an alpaca farm. The night before that, she had a sleepover with her cousins at my sister’s house.
“No,” she said, “this day was the best.”
This day? I wondered. This day, where she woke up in her grandparents' house and ate waffles for breakfast with her youngest cousin? This day, when we got in a car and she was buckled in a seat for hours? A day when she did little more than stare out the window, watch a movie, then read? A day where she got a donut and sat in DC traffic, talking with me about showing her dad and siblings the video of her feeding that fish? A day when we traveled home to our regular life?
How interesting that an ordinary day, to her, was worthy of being called the best.
***
At the beach, my daughter slept in every morning while I wrote. After lunch, we’d walk to the beach where I wore a sweatshirt and sweatpants and she braved a swimsuit. We mostly read in silence next to each other. Later, I’d go for a long walk, and she would run, catching up with me on her way back and we’d return to the house side by side. One morning, she crawled into my bed, saying she was going to go to the beach early. But instead she fell back asleep, her body curled up next to mine for hours.
One day, we walked to the pier, chatting about this and that, though there were plenty of moments of silence. But on the way home, one topic led to another, and soon we were discussing love and faith.
We made easy meals each evening and watched movies each night. We got donuts one morning, açai bowls and coffee on another. On the drive back, she offered to get behind the wheel and I, for once, accepted the help. Not long after, the clouds darkened and rain began. Soon, we could hardly see the road. Hands tight on the wheel, she sat up stick straight, “Mom, I can’t do this.”
For a split second, I thought about how I once said “I can't do this” while giving birth to her. Echoing what the nurses said to me back then, I told her, “Yes, you can.” And then, adding in what felt like the most maternal gift I could give, “and I will help you.”
Hazards on, our eyes barely making out the edge of the road, I tried to offer a steady stream of encouragement—“you’re good,” “stay straight,” “it’s okay,” “you’re doing it,” “a little to the right”—and together, we made it to the calm side of the storm.
Actual sweat dripped down her neck. Her hands relaxed. Both our heart rates settled down to normal. Then she looked over to me and asked, “Can you drive now?”
***
Last summer, we took a big family trip. While everyone was still at home, it seemed like the right time. The younger kids were old enough to enjoy it without complaint, and the older kids weren’t limited by jobs or summer internships. It was, at least for me, a trip of a lifetime.
As this summer approached, though, something in my heart felt heavy. Unlike last year, we don’t have any big plans. We’ll be at the pool. We might go away for a weekend. We’ll head to the beach with extended family, like we do every year.
It’s all good. But it’s nothing all that special.
And yet, I keep going back to what Sarah said.
When I look back on my own life, some of my fondest memories are an accumulation of simple things. Of driving to the beach. Of playing with my cousins. Of being bored out of my mind, but then soon entertained by my imagination. Of reading book after book after book.
I think about how I felt just knowing my mom was in the kitchen. Or at her computer. Or drinking a cup of coffee and talking with her friends. I think of my dad taking me out for a bike ride. Or when I’d play dress up with my little sister. Or driving home from youth group with my brother.
As an adult with growing children, I can look back and see how in all my memories, my family was always there—either right next to me or somewhere in the background. But ever constant. Even in the most mundane of moments, I moved through the world with a deep knowing, a quiet confidence, that I was always cared for and deeply loved.
So yes, we don’t have any big plans this summer. And there wasn’t a fancy beach house in Florida over spring break. But what I want for my children—and what I want for me as their mom—is a lifetime of ordinary memories. The ones which are also extraordinary, simply because we have them.
Sonya Spillmann is a nurse, an essayist, and freelance writer living in the DC area with her husband and four kids. She's incapable of small talk, loves red lipstick, and spends the majority of her afternoons driving children around in her minivan. You can read more through her Substack, Finding Feathers.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.