What hat am I wearing?

navigating my roles and seasons in motherhood + on the farm

This morning, I drove back from the bus stop with a dog on my lap and tears streaming down my face. I waited until the last car door slammed, and the third backpack disappeared onto the bus into the dark, the sun not even on the horizon yet. It wasn’t the first or last day of school, but I cried like it was.

Minutes before, the kids chatted about college and living on their own. Nora said, “I can’t live by myself! You and I will live together, right, Mom?”

I nodded, knowing she wouldn't really want to live with me when those years rolled around. “Yes, I would love to live with you! We’ll have fun!” I glanced at her in the rearview mirror, her new haircut catching me off guard. Her face suddenly older.

Yesterday, I took the girls for haircuts after school. They had been patiently waiting for weeks for their appointments. Allie had about six inches taken off and bounced out of the salon. Nora had about as much cut off and, uncharacteristically, didn’t say much when we left the salon. I told her how cute it was, tucked under her chin. But I felt a stab in my stomach, the long wisps of her hair gone. The hair of a little girl, wild and untamed—just like her—left lying on the linoleum floor behind us.

Once we got home, she begged to call my mom, as she does every day. I gave her my phone, and she FaceTimed Grandma. She immediately started bawling, telling her how she hated her hair. “It’s too short!” she sobbed, throwing her head onto her arms on the kitchen table.

Nora turns five in May, and at this point, we don’t know whether she’ll go to kindergarten in the fall or continue with another year of Pre-K.

I’ve lived on the farm for over 11 years. But most of that time has been spent with at least one kid at home with me. The thought of being alone is sometimes terrifying. I’ve been asking myself for a long time: who am I without them?

I wrote this line in my notebook a couple of months ago: “What hat are you wearing?” Our farm coach asked Rich and me this question during a regular weekly call about our roles on the farm and working with family. Are you talking to each other like in-laws or co-workers?

His words stuck with me, and I haven’t stopped thinking about them since that day. In 2014, I put on the “mom” hat for the first time. But really, I started wearing that hat in 2013 when I became pregnant, trying it on like a costume, never alone for the first time in my life, with a baby growing inside of me.

For the past decade, I’ve never taken off the mom hat—day or night. Often, I toss another hat on top of it: farm hand, chauffeur, cook, writer. But at the bottom of the pile is always the mom hat. The others topple and are unsteady and mismatched as I try to balance them all.

Driving home from the bus, I keep returning to the same questions and worries I’ve had for the last year. Did I wish the time away with them at home? Did I do enough? Did we make enough memories? Why did I wish the time away?

Why was I in such a hurry to get here?

A couple of hours later, after I’ve dried my tears, I make myself scrambled eggs. The dog lies near me on her bed. I’ll pick Nora up from school in a couple of hours, come home, and then return to town again to pick up the big kids. (So much driving in this season of motherhood.) Rhett has a haircut and basketball practice after school. I’ll do the laundry and make dinner. I have calls to the doctor to make and bills to pay. Toilets to clean.

I know I can fight and claw against this next season. I can wish I hadn’t chopped Nora’s hair, that somehow that would slow time. I know the seasons will keep coming. I’ve been through many of them on the farm and motherhood—droughts, harvests, planting, rainy days, and everything in between.

The hardest part of this season ahead is that I don’t know what it will feel like, and the unknowns pelt me in the gut. I remember how I longed for these days in the early years of motherhood, wishing for time to myself. But now that it’s nearly here, I have nothing to compare it to.

Will it feel like rain on a hot day after months of drought?

Will it feel like the first day of harvest, with the excitement and nervousness of the anticipated season?

Will it feel like a hailstorm coming through, the heartbreaking loss of the crops smashed in seconds?

I’ll still write stories in my head and sometimes on the page. I’ll keep wearing my mom hat, which I’ll sometimes use to hide my tears. Nora’s hair will grow. I’ll get used to the silence.

In some ways, I’ll have to learn what it means to live on the farm again. I’ll have to readjust the pile of hats, likely adding new ones and swapping others out. I’ll figure out how to wear my mom hat in new ways.

I’m in a season of letting go, and I have to trust what’s next. This is how life and motherhood work. I know I cannot stay in one season forever, and realistically, I know I wouldn’t want to.

The seasons will keep coming—even the ones we think never will. And often, they don’t feel how we expected them to.