It's Always Been the Moms
By Katie (Blackburn) Kelley
@katiemblackburn
It’s after 9:00 p.m. on a chilly December night, and I’ve just put my ten-month-old baby to bed. I’ll see him in a few hours, I’m sure, because not one of the five children that have grown in my body came out with the ability to sleep through the night until well after their first birthday. There’s no sense of “bedtime relief” for the mom in this season. Bedtime won’t really come for a few more months.
I drag myself back out to the living room, because the dirty dishes in the sink and the vast array of small toys on the floor are still waiting for me. My husband is not here. He’s checked himself into rehab for an addiction I did not even know about. But my best friend? She’s here. And she’s crouched down under the dining room table, picking up dominos off the wood floor.
Within hours of hearing about my husband, she had a flight booked. And a few days later, she packed up her four-year-old daughter and flew through a literal blizzard to Eastern Washington so she could help me clean up toys at the end of another very long day. You should know a few things about my best friend: she hates being cold, hates getting wet even more, and gray skies for too long make her grouchy. But she flew into a blizzard for me anyway.
Another thing you should know is that she’s a mom. An amazing one. And somehow she knew that in a season of my life where I did not know how I’d get up the next day and keep going, I would need a lot of things. Text messages of encouragement and help with the mortgage and meals dropped off on the porch, absolutely. But she also knew that at the end of the day, after carrying the weight of my shattered little world and the heartache of six children on my shoulders, what I would really need is someone to help me pick up the dominoes. So she got on a plane, then got on the floor to help me.
Because she’s a mom.
And moms just have this way of knowing what another mom really needs.
***
I’m at the doctor for a routine well-child check with one of my kids when my phone starts ringing. I silence the call quickly. Then it buzzes with a text. And another. And another.
“Check the news.”
“Shooting at the school.”
“Can you answer?”
The blood drains from my face in a moment. My kids’ middle school, the place where I have an 8th grader who could probably run the world if someone gave her the chance, and a 7th grader with autism who will run away from chaos into more danger if someone doesn’t keep him safe. Two pieces of my whole heart, and the words “school shooting” in the same sentence. Every mother’s worst nightmare.
Even though text messages keep telling us not to come to school, I leave the doctor and drive there anyway. It was communicated to parents pretty quickly that the shooter had been “neutralized” and no staff or students were hurt. But the lockdown protocols proceed. And because the school is now a crime scene, police have blocked every street to the school in a quarter mile radius around it.
My 8th grader? She’ll be okay. We will talk about the experience later tonight, but she was spared from witnessing anything traumatic, she’s safe with her friends in her fourth period class playing silly games, and honestly, happy to be off the hook from doing classwork.
But my son—my vulnerable, not-typical, beautiful son—will not be okay. My mind is racing with what could happen to him. Because lockdowns, clearing rooms quickly, evacuations and dozens of police cars and him wondering why he can’t go to the lunchroom and sit next to his friend like he does every day, it will all be too much for his nervous system. And evacuate? It would take four grown adults to lift his frightened body onto a bus he’s not familiar with. And you think he’s going to wait in a two-hour line for me to pick him up at the reunification center without a fight? I am feeling sick with anxiety. All I can think is, I have to get to Cannon.
The problem is, I can’t get anywhere close to the school. Yellow tape and sirens and lots of officers with bullet proof vests all stand in my way. The police are sympathetic to my plight but also, procedure is procedure. I get it. I’m endlessly grateful for first responders doing their job.
But how do I explain … everything? How do I sum up Cannon’s brand of autism, a unique blend of kindness and creativity that would blow your mind, but, also, a terrifying penchant for hurting himself? How do I recap that I’ve been on the other end of the classroom speaker phone for an hour trying to calm down my son—who is currently locked inside the school—and that he needs to get out of there because trust me, officer, he will hit his own head so hard it would shock even you?
Just then, as I’m standing on the street corner a few blocks from the school begging the police officer to let me through, a FaceTime call rings on my phone. Cannon’s teacher, holding his body while he shakes and screams for mommy. “Can you get to the staff parking lot on the northside of the building, Katie?” she asks me.
I will find a way, I tell her.
I leave one police officer and sprint to the van I left parked on another street. I pull up to a different blockade and beg the officer there, again, to just let me get close to the staff parking lot. This officer is a woman, maybe a mother, too, and her face visibly changes hearing Cannon screaming on the phone. She tells me she can let me through, but I have to turn left before the school, because those other police officers are not going to budge. “Thank you, thank you!” I tell her, and I snake my van that is too big for cones and closures a quarter mile closer to the school. To my son.
With his teacher still on the phone, I tell Cannon, “I’m coming buddy! Mommy is coming!” and as soon as the chainlink fence that separates the staff parking lot from the adjacent neighborhood is in sight, I can see Cannon’s teacher walking outside with him, holding his hand. He has headphones on, and his wailing echoes all the way down the street to me. I get out of the car and start running.
Three police officers are walking next to Cannon and his teacher, ready to help her with him if needed but mostly anxious to get all of us out of sight because surely, we’ve all broken procedure at this point.
But Cannon’s hero teacher, who passed his hand off to me and turned around and quickly ran back into the school for the rest of her kids, is also a mom. And she knows everything I was trying to explain to the officers, and that my son needed to get out of there and into my arms as soon as possible.
Because you know what’s stronger than a police blockade and yellow tape and procedures?
Mothers.
Always, the mothers.
***
A few weeks ago I wrote a story about taking Cannon to Home Depot and how we ended up chasing dandelions in the parking lot. Not because I particularly wanted to, and not in some magical, let’s make a wish sense. No, we chased dandelions because Cannon fixated on one that flew away, and we were not going home until I caught another one. But the story ended well. I learned a lot about myself, and prayer, and my son, and the work God has given me to do in the world.
And last week, a package showed up on my doorstep. It had my name on it, and a small white box inside. When I opened the box, I pulled out a dandelion in a tiny glass, with a note that said, “Wish flowers are temporary. Difficult days are too. Cannon is so lucky to have such an incredible mom.” From, Someone rooting for you.
A stranger, perhaps a fellow disability mom? I still don’t know who sent this to me, but I know it was someone who really ‘gets’ it. Who else could possibly know that I would need this exact encouragement on the very day it came, other than another mom, who maybe has had to chase her own brand of dandelions through a parking lot, too?
***
It’s always been the moms, hasn’t it?
It was a group of mothers who donated money to me when my ex-husband left so my kids and I could have a little breathing room while we got on our feet.
It was a group of moms who showed up and cleaned my house on Sunday nights for three months where I could barely work up the energy to wash a dish.
It was a group of moms who met me in Charleston to celebrate my 40th birthday after the absolute worst year of my life.
It was the moms who fed me, dropped off hand-me-downs, met me on Peloton at 5am to pedal out my anxiety.
It's the moms on Voxer listening to me cry and curse and laugh.
It was a mom who said "You better give him your number tonight!” A mom who encouraged me that I wasn’t damaged goods, that I should try to date if I really liked the guy, and who told me not to wear sweatpants when we go out to coffee.
Then it was the moms who planned a bachelorette party, flew across the country, picked out my wedding dress, and toasted to a new chapter in a story I could never in a million years have thought up myself.
In the hardest times, it’s the moms.
In the best times, it’s the moms.
In my life, how I’m still standing after everything?
Jesus, of course.
But also, the moms.
Katie Kelley lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she is the mama to eight in a beautiful blended family. She is saved by grace and runs on cold brew coffee and long therapy sessions on her Peloton bike. You can read more of her writing on faith, motherhood, disability, and a good, good God over at Substack.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.