Before you turn 15…

.....the reel that split my heart open.

Last night I broke my own rules.

I was supposed to have my phone down because in my new post-menopause world, I am not on my screen right before bed or heaven forbid after the lights go out. “I’m just going to find a good meditation,” I told my almost asleep husband, who reminded me I’d already broken my vow 2 nights in a row. But I never found that meditation because, like a guilty midnight snack, before long I found myself scrolling, not looking for anything specific but needing the dopamine hit of something life-affirming to send me off to sleep. I stopped at a story a colleague had posted with the hook of all hooks: “ugly crying over this STILL” she promised. I clicked on the reel.

An ordinary man in an ordinary room awkwardly asks his clearly teenaged son, “put your hands up in the air like this.” His son looks puzzled but obliges. “Now say uppy,” he asks expressionlessly, and his son does. Now I see where this is going. I pause the video and look down at the words at the bottom, “This turned out to be way more emotional….”, and I’m already teary. He then places his hands under his son’s arms and asks him to wrap his legs around him. Awkwardly, the kid obliges, lets his dad lift him up and the comical request suddenly starts to change into a testament to the relentless love of a parent. Soon his son is holding on for real, letting his father support his weight one last time. When his feet touch the floor again, he is wiping tears aside brusquely, and some passing of the torch has officially sent me over the edge.

Suddenly, every cell in my body aches for that feeling, for the angelic little voices asking me the same question. “Uppy, Mommy? Uppy?” I think of my first born as I obliged time after time, his soft hair falling in his eyes, always placing his head right on my shoulder after making it to my arms, hands patting the back of my neck. He smelled like fresh cut grass always and never got too heavy. When was his last uppy? I knew it was coming before I was ready. I just don’t remember when.

Then my baby, my daughter years later. “Uppy, Mommy. Uppy uppy,” she’d sing, knowing the immediate relief she’d feel, likely sensing the same from me. 5 years apart, my uppy career spanned longer than most mothers of two. And I was grateful for every single day. Her “uppies” were so different. Little hand on the nape of my neck first then cheek to cheek, maximum contact, arms encircling me. Her little brown and black dog, Pupu, usually came along too. I can’t remember her last one either but God how I miss them both.

The word itself breaks me in two, as I long to hold them, safe in my arms, a union of solidarity and safety, a universal “yes I would take a bullet for you, carry your troubles if they weighed a thousand pounds” kind of unconditional love that one day must transmute into different form.

That video floated through each of my dreams last night. Goodbyes that were never said, last first days of school, last lullaby before bed, last hand held walking into class, and of course the last uppy. All the tender bits of childhood that broke from cocoons of “one day” into butterflies and took on new forms. Lying beside my husband in the dark I wept for the passing of time. So proud of the young adults they’ve become, but my God, how fiercely they needed me, love like hunger then. I ache to put them in pajamas just one more night, freshly bathed, hair combed, smelling of soap and innocence and love.

I know, though, that the goodbye moments morph into new expressions of love and support. We learn new ways to show strength for each other, to stay connected, to replace hand-holding with life advice. If we are very lucky, there are new memories, new experiences that, rich in their own ways, are maybe even just as special as an uppy. Todays instead of yesterdays. Tomorrows twinkling like stars in the night sky.

But…does that last uppy touch a nerve for you, too? Were you, like one of the 5083 commenters, sobbing uncontrollably if you watched it? Did you read the poignant afterword? Either way, I’ll tell you why I think it hits so damn hard.

As women, especially if you are a mother who has given everything she can to the idea of being a generational cycle breaker, you may be in that space of watching time literally speeding up before you. You’re not imagining it, it’s true. When a child is 2, one year is 50% of their lives. When they’re 20, that same 365 days is a much, much smaller fraction Each moment of time, relatively, speeds up while our feet stay still. The long days of babyhood become quick school weeks and years that pass faster than seems scientifically possible. Your pregnant neighbor you haven’t seen in awhile suddenly walks on your block with a toddler, your babies suddenly both nearly grown in various stages of needing you differently. The relationships change, grow, mature, evolve, but that uppy, well, that uppy just sits like the backyard playset I’m not really sure we will ever have the heart to take down.

Sunny, our beloved yellow lab, now over 14, has almost left us many times in this last year. Every time my son would leave us to return to college he would say a deep, heartfelt goodbye to her knowing it might be the last time. It hasn’t been. Yet today, as the sun caught the yellow of the leaves on the ground and she lifted her nose to the sunshine, sniffing the grandeur of her very loved life, I knew. I knew the way you know a last uppy is coming, that there aren’t many more moments in the fall sunshine.

So I stopped. I kneeled down and she came to me like she did as a puppy, leaning gently into me. We took in the sun. The leaves whispering, crunching their presence, pulling me into the moment. Maybe it was our last Fall moment, our last uppy. But right then it felt like the only moment in the world.

Dedicated to Sunny, the light of our lives. Every day with you was a gift and every day without you I’ll look for you in the sky 💔

8/24/2011-11/14/2025