My mom's fridge

There’s a picture I love to see on my mom’s fridge. It’s my daughter, who is around two years of age. She’s wearing nothing but a yellow shirt with violet, purple, and lavender wings wrapped around her shoulders. It’s August in Missoula and the pavement is wet from the sprinklers. Stella was born in November, two winters before this photo was taken. This is her first summer on her feet roaming in the dirt. In Montana, winters are long and cold. By the time spring equinox rolls around the roads are still lined with dirty snow which won’t fully melt until April or May. Vegetable starts go into the ground around no sooner than the first week of June and the first frost comes back during the last week of September. This means warm summer days are few and precious and Stella has just found the sweet combination of sun and sprinklers on bare skin. In the picture, her arms are outstretched, and her little bare feet are in midair.

When I see this picture of Stella, my heart races as I imagine the space between me, the one viewing the picture, and Stella, the one running toward me. Each time I see her, I’m always me, right now. And while this little dragonfly stays the same age, I continue to transform. She is my reminder that moments aren’t lost simply because I hid from them, they’re just waiting to be explored.

Most of a dragonfly’s life occurs unseen, in still waters, where they spend the majority of the time looking like an alien. At nearly two, Stella is just starting to lose her alien-like features. When she was first born, her face was all munched and wrinkly, but in this photo, she looks like a real toddler. If you stare closely you can still see the last vestiges of infancy. Her hair is growing in patches of tumbleweed next to swaths of barren thick flakey skin where nothing can grow. The late morning sun highlights her little fingers and bounces off her nose. Her eyes are squinting as the sprinkler taunts her and teases her to run through to the other side.

Whenever she could, Stella loved to take off all her clothes. But during this summer morning the shirt and the wings stayed on as evidence of her flight. I like to remember that moment often. I imagine that her trip ends in my arms with the smell of sweet bananas and sour milk. Her hands grab my cheeks and demand eye contact, “Momma. Momma.” These words uttered in insistence continue the long conversation we’ve been having since I was pregnant, only just now she’s beginning to find the words.

But this moment has happened a thousand times already. She needs eye contact and holds my face because the experience is so big and she’s trying to make me understand. Even today, as an adult she carries forward that light, that spark of frustration in her eyes when she can’t find the words but still carries the thought. And I think, this is what I’m trying to do today. How do I say what I know about myself then with the memories of what happened after the picture was taken? After Stella lands in my arms? And after she grew up and left home? Each time I look at this picture, I know more about that moment than I did before. But back then, it was just like any other day. I probably had to scoop dog poop, make snacks, pick up toys and animal hair. I didn’t know how precious that moment was, how fleeting it might have been. But today I’m remembering that she had just flown into my arms, her first flight. Even though she was limited with words she still said, “Momma, momma!” It was as good as saying, I love you. I just flew. Did you see me? You caught me.

She must have been overwhelmed by the experience of having taken flight. Her first real summer as a separate being, and literally, she flew into it. She told me all about it with a glance, and held my cheeks in her hands. I know her, her temperament, her likes, her dislikes. We’ve been learning from each other since the very beginning when she was still in my womb. And even before then, as a little egg she spent time in my body while I was inside my mom. All three of us, linked in body, one informing the other who informs the other. Like Russian dolls we nested inside the roots of our grandmothers and great grandmothers. A matrilineal line which connects us all. I believe her intensity and determination comes from the flight of my great grandmothers. So I know her and I know her well. And I like to think about the future she is carrying – the seed of some little dragonfly that may come into being. Whoever it is, if they carry an x chromosome will have also spent time with me, being shaped and informed by the me who was waiting for the dragonfly to land in her arms that day.