Everything She Carried

My mother carried me before I was a person. Carried me in the dark of her own body, in the months before names, before anyone knew whether I'd have her eyes or her stubbornness. She got both. She carried me home from the hospital in a car seat she'd installed three times because the manual was wrong or she was wrong or the world was wrong for making something so important so hard to click into place. She carried grocery bags and my backpack and the conversation with my teacher that I didn't know about until years later when she mentioned it like it was nothing. She carried the budget. The worry. The 2 a.m. temperature check. The knowledge of which friend was a good influence and which one she kept her opinions about to herself. She carried the weight of pretending she wasn't tired. She carried my sadness when I was fifteen and sure the world was specifically designed to exclude me— carried it without correcting it, without fixing it, just held the door open and said: I know. Come sit. I didn't say thank you enough. I didn't say it at the right times. I said it over text, over the phone, in cards I bought at the last minute with someone else's words inside. But here is the thing I want to say with my own words, on this day that barely begins to cover it: You carried everything. And when I finally learned to carry myself, it was because you showed me how it's done.