There She Is

There is something about watching your grandchildren that feels different from watching your own children grow up. Maybe it’s because I’m not the one responsible for keeping everyone alive this time.

I can just watch.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m still a mother, which means I apparently remain professionally qualified to worry about everyone for the rest of my natural life. But with my grandchildren, I have the luxury of noticing things I probably missed when I was raising my own.

And lately, I’ve been noticing my granddaughter Natalin.

Natalin is six years old, and that little girl has an extraordinary gift for gymnastics. Not grandmother extraordinary. Actually extraordinary.

She has a natural ability well beyond what you would expect at her age. She has already been invited to train with a higher-level team alongside girls older than she is. There is real potential in that tiny little body.

But her ability isn’t the thing I find most fascinating.

It’s what happens when she doesn’t know how to do something.

Show Natalin a new move and she wants to learn it. She watches. She listens. She tries. If she doesn’t get it, she tries again. There is this determination in her that seems far too big for such a little person. It’s as if her brain has already decided, Well, obviously we’re going to learn this, and her body simply needs to catch up.

Every new move gives her a choice. Stay with what she already knows she can do, or try the thing she can’t do yet.

At six years old, she probably isn’t standing on the mat contemplating the long-term consequences of her personal growth strategy.

She just tries the move.

If she misses it, she tries again.

Of course, I see pieces of my son in Natalin too. Her quick wit, her enormous heart, that little spark that makes people pay attention.

And when something matters to her, there is a determination that belongs to both of her parents. She watches. She works. She figures things out.

But there is something else I see in those moments.

Something that makes me stop.

I knew little Kyle.

I got to watch that determined little boy grow up.

But I didn’t know little Sarah.

And sometimes, when Natalin gets that determined little look on her face, I find myself thinking:

There she is. There’s the little Sarah I always pictured her as.

I didn’t know Sarah when she was six. Sometimes I wish I had. I think I would have put that little girl in my pocket and loved on her every chance I got.

Maybe that’s a funny thing for a mother-in-law to say. But I’ve known grown-up Sarah for a very long time now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about her, it’s that you have to pay attention.

Sarah is reserved. Very reserved.

She’s not going to sit you down and provide a detailed explanation of everything she’s thinking and feeling.

Trust me. I’ve waited.

Unless, of course, something really needs to be said. Then Sarah seems to have no trouble finding exactly the right words.

Much like my husband, I always know where I stand.

And honestly, I’ve learned to appreciate that about her too.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped waiting for Sarah to tell me who she is.

I learned to watch her.

And when you watch Sarah, you see quite a lot.

You see how hard she works. How quickly she learns. The details she notices. The way she loves her family. You see a woman who can encounter something she doesn’t know how to do and decide she’ll figure it out.

And you see the choices she makes.

Sarah and Kyle chose each other when they were young and began building a life together while they were still figuring out what that life might become.

Then life did what life does.

Some dreams unfolded. Others changed shape. New dreams appeared that she couldn’t possibly have imagined when she was younger, and sometimes the road in front of her looked nothing like the one she once pictured.

But when the road changed, Sarah didn’t stop.

She learned. She adjusted. She earned new credentials. She and Kyle built businesses together. When something didn’t go as planned, she figured out what came next.

Maybe that’s something we miss when we think about the dreams we once had.

Choosing one road doesn’t mean we’re never allowed to choose again.

We aren’t locked into the picture we had for ourselves at twenty. Or thirty. Or forty. A choice isn’t always a destination. Sometimes it’s simply the next place from which we get to choose again.

And some of the most beautiful things we eventually build weren’t even visible from where we started.

I’ve watched Sarah do that as a mother too.

Twelve years ago, our family spent months holding its collective breath while Kyle and Sarah waited for two little boys to arrive. There were complications and frightening possibilities. There were circumstances no young parents imagine facing.

The details belong to their family, and the boys’ stories belong to them.

But I can tell you what I witnessed.

I watched a young mother enter a world she never expected to enter.

And I watched her show up.

She learned what she needed to learn. She loved those babies. She came back the next day and did it again.

Those two impossibly tiny babies just turned twelve.

And Sarah is still showing up.

For her children. Beside my son. For the life they’ve built. For the people she loves.

Sarah may be reserved, but there is nothing quiet about the way she loves.

You can see it in what she does, in how she shows up, and in the people she continues to stand beside. She loves deeply and loyally, without keeping score of what comes back to her.

Maybe that’s why the decision she and Kyle are making for Natalin has stayed with me.

Gymnastics is becoming much more than an after-school activity for their daughter. Natalin has been given an opportunity to develop an exceptional natural gift, and she has already demonstrated that she has something just as important to go with it:

The willingness to work for it.

This next level requires more. Longer practices. Competitions. Time. Expense. Commitment.

And choices.

Sarah is going to homeschool Natalin so their daughter has the time and flexibility she needs to train and compete.

There are no guarantees attached to that choice.

No one knows exactly where gymnastics will take this little girl.

But Sarah is paying attention.

She sees the talent. She sees the discipline. She sees the determination. She sees a little girl who doesn’t simply want to be good at something. She’s willing to work at becoming better.

Of course Sarah recognizes that.

I do too.

There she is.

And suddenly I realized I wasn’t only watching my granddaughter chase a dream.

I was watching her mother make room for one.

Maybe that is one of the greatest gifts we can give someone we love.

Not a guarantee that their dream will come true.

Just the opportunity to find out.

And when I look at Sarah, I realize that’s what she has done over and over again.

She has worked with the life in front of her. She has learned. She has pivoted. She has loved. She has chosen what to build from where she landed.

I’ve written stories about so many people I love, but I’ve never written one about her.

Maybe part of that is because Sarah is so private.

Or maybe I needed all these years to learn how to see her.

Because I do now.

Sarah, I see you.

I see your brilliance and how hard you work. I see the thousand little details you take care of that most of us never even realize needed taking care of.

I see the way you love those babies.

I see the life you and Kyle have built.

I see the way you keep learning when something new is required of you.

And I see a woman who has encountered roads she couldn’t have anticipated and kept choosing what to build from where she landed.

And Sarah, you’re still choosing.

There are roads you haven’t seen yet. Things you haven’t tried yet. Choices you haven’t been asked to make yet.

Dreams you haven’t even dreamed yet.

Sarah, there is something I don’t know if I’ve ever said to you quite this way.

You are the one I prayed for Kyle’s whole life.

Long before I knew your name, I prayed for the person who would someday love my son and build a life beside him.

I didn’t know what that life would look like.

I didn’t know there would someday be two twelve-year-old boys who once scared the living daylights out of all of us, or a beautiful six-year-old girl flying through the air.

I didn’t know about the changed plans, the hard seasons, the things you would build together or all the ordinary messiness that comes with creating a real life.

I just knew I wanted someone to love my son.

And you do.

Now I get to watch the two of you love these children.

And I get the tremendous privilege of loving them too, with everything this grandmother can muster, just as I loved my own.

I don’t know where Natalin’s gift will take her.

But I cannot wait to find out.

She has the talent. She has the work ethic. She has the determination.

And she has parents willing to make choices that give her the opportunity to discover just how far she can go.

So when I watch Natalin working on that next move, I’ll smile.

A little bit of Kyle.

A little bit of Sarah.

And a whole lot of Natalin.

But every once in a while, if I watch closely enough, I know what I’ll see.

There she is.

The little Sarah I always wished I could have known.

And this time, I get to love her too. ❤️