So many times I have started to come back here, yet for one reason (excuse) or another I haven't. The last time I was here in April 2020, the world had only just started to feel surreal. Fast forward 30-something months and it feels like we are just starting to improve. I guess I haven't felt inspired to write much because we were not living the best of days; yet still, as the song goes, they are the days we will never forget.
Since we last met, a major hurricane ravaged our hometown in August 2020, leaving many literally homeless (including my parents). The girls and I lived communally with friends in Baton Rouge where they attended school until our electricity was restored. Our home was mostly spared. My parents lived with us for several months while they rebuilt. My work since that day has been almost exclusively on assisting homeowners with their claims. I brought to trial the first two hurricane cases in Calcasieu Parish and we won both.
Also since we were last here, Aly transferred to public middle school, tested into Gifted, and made the dance line. She is thriving there after what I will one day write about as some of the scariest moments I have yet had as a mother, watching her become a shell of a person at the hands of a bully. Now when her friends are at the house keeping me awake in the wee hours of the morning, all I need to hear is her giggle to lay back down and let them be kids, happy she is happy. Even when there are 13 of them upstairs and I'm "sleeping" on the couch like was the case on Saturday for her birthday.
She turned 13 on Saturday. How I am the mother of a teenager is beyond me. It's a combination of every single feeling that one can experience - fear, anxiety, love - so much overwhelming love, joy, excitement, curiosity - literally every feeling all balled into one that makes me just sit in awe and wonder at her, at life, at God. I keep hearing that the time is really going to start fly by and I am really, really going to make an effort to be there, to give her the best of me for the time I have left with her under my roof. It is hard - boy is it hard having a 13-year old 7th grade girl - but I vow to love her well.
Maggie is also living her best life. She is a dancing queen, mathlete, straight-A-making drama queen. She recently told me she had given up her dream of acting, since her dream was specifically to be a "child actor" and obviously "that ship had sailed." It's a pity we do not live somewhere she is likely to be discovered - it is truly Hollywood's loss. Her newest venture is swimming and yesterday she learned that she made the Mighty Marlins swim team, so in addition to dance-mom I will be learning how to be a swim mom.
Unlike their promise to never grow old, I will keep my promises to love them well. The days - even the bad ones - are more than I could have ever asked for, the days we've been waiting for and I could not ask for more.
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