When the daughter began wearing the sorts of skirts the mother could in no way rationalize, the mother felt her heart sink to her gut every time the daughter left the house. This was so much worse than before. She sighed and cried and dealt. She could deal with this. But only this. Nothing more.

When the daughter put on her first pair of pants, she wore a long shirt with them.

“The shirt is like a skirt, on top of pants,” the mother said. The daughter half smiled. The mother cried. But she accepted. Still, this was it. More than this, she could not do.

The shirts got shorter, as did the sleeves. The pants became jeans. The jeans became shorts. The short sleeves became sleeveless. Each time the mother said: This I can handle but that I cannot.

Her life was dayeinu, in reverse.

The mother pinched herself, not only to check that this was not some terrible nightmare, but to make sure that she still was. Because she didn’t imagine she could have survived this long.

Come to think of it, this is not a full story. It’s more like the CliffsNotes.

This was it. The mother had reached her line in the sand. She could not go any further. One more wrong turn by the daughter, and the mother would break into a million fragments of her former self.

But the daughter had no such lines in the sand.

When the daughter came home with her first tattoo (the mother cannot recall what it was; there were so many more since then), the mother realized she was finished. The daughter had crossed the line. What was on the other side of the line for the mother? Brokenness. She imagined clichés like, she is a shell of her former self.

But the mother surprised herself, getting up in the morning, going to work. Taking the daughter on a walk through the neighborhood. She got used to it. It didn’t kill her. She learned to be proud of her daughter’s journey. She was proud of her place in the daughter’s journey. The mother uses a pseudonym here to protect the daughter’s privacy, not her own.

That last line is approximately 85 percent true. The mother is a bit of an unreliable narrator. But she wants it to be 100 percent true. Thinks it will be one day. And that is enough for now.

But back to our story (did I mention it’s a sad story?).

When the daughter stopped keeping Shabbos, it finally happened. The mother was done. Through. Finito. Life as she knew it was kaput.

It was true. Life as she knew it was kaput. She crawled under the covers. She would stay there until — she had no idea of how to finish that sentence. But an hour later, dinner needed to be cooked. There were other daughters. Other sons. That daughter.

The line in the sand became: The daughter must blink her eyes open each morning. The line in the sand was not about the mother; it hadn’t really ever been.

The mother grew a backbone. The mother already had a backbone. She grew a backbone over her original backbone and another backbone over that one and even though all that bone was so heavy — it kept her ramrod straight.

The daughter needed her to be strong and that is why the mother became a giant spine.

Or maybe the mother just didn’t want to generate more trauma among all her healthy children.

Or maybe, none of those things are true. Perhaps the mother simply needed to stand tall because her mattress was lumpy and she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life lying on it.

Whatever the reason, the mother didn’t break. She liked to imagine herself like that young woman her kids told her about — the one born without fingers who managed to run a recording studio!

Do you know how many buttons you need to press in a recording studio? a different daughter said.

The mother thinks herself a hero. Like that woman without fingers, like that man born with no limbs — NONE — who became a gymnast. Yes! The mother is like him! She has pushed herself beyond her limitations. When the daughter ditched Yom Kippur like a ratty towel the mother gulped and moved on because there are no lines in the sand when it comes to love. The mother was the queen of the neuroplasticity of the brain, well beyond adolescence! Hail the mother! Long live the mother!

Except it wasn’t exactly like that. The mother has her moments. Did I say has? Did I say I? The mother is getting distracted from the story.

The mother had her gray moments. Sometimes they were longer than moments. Sometimes they were periods. Gray periods. It sounded like something an artist experienced. The mother was an artist, sculpting all this into something with edges and heft.

The mother feels she is going on now, and on. That’s what happens when a story doesn’t have an ending. She is still in the loop. She will switch from past to present tense at will because there are still so many adventures to choose ahead of her. But at the end of each one, the mother is still whole.

The daughter is on a journey. The mother is, too.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 902)