It’s the spring of my senior year of high school. Everything is looking up for me; I leave for Germany for a Gap Year in June, I am one of the leads in a musical, my senior project that you will be doing during the entirety of May is your dream job, prom is just around the corner and I’m feeling good.

Except for one grey cloud that seems to have been looming over my head. My family and I will be moving out of our beautiful home the day after my graduation. The poster of Beyoncé in my sunny, colorful room is taken down and placed neatly in a box. The basement where my lazy sisters and I have spent hours in watching TV does not have the massive plush bean chair so I am forced to sit on the couch. Half of my clothes are in boxes, but how am I to know if I need that cozy blue sweater this summer (tip: you don’t, Maddie. It’s 90 degrees outside. Stop that nonsense).

Suddenly, leaving high school doesn’t seem as glamorous any more. I feel my chubby little 7-year-old hand of childhood slowly letting go, as that form of little Maddie stays in that large house that is clearly way too big for just Mom and Dad. “It will be hard, Maddie, but it makes sense,” people say as I break the news that the house of parties is no longer in business.

But the worst part isn’t leaving my childhood home, it’s watching my Mother leave the home she grew up in and then proceeded to raise her kids in. I know that the sadness and worry that I feel is doubled for her because she has double the memories and double the love for every inch of that house. By giving up the keys, she is accepting the new part of her life to begin — that wont be filled by chubby little blonde girls running around on the slippery wood floor of the dining room. She doesn’t want this anymore than I do, but it has to happen.

I feel her pain. She feels my pain.

Then the day comes. The day to say goodbye. I climb into the car with my sister and sit there for a while. My parents walk out. From the sidewalk she looks at the two of us sitting in the car. I think she will cry or turn around start unpacking the work done during those many months of stress. Instead, she hears the music playing from the car radio. “Sexy Back” by Justin Timberlake is playing. We crank it, because why not. And she begins to dance; a dance that I have never seen before in her repertoire (which is quite extensive) but one of incredible emotion and silliness. She wiggles around and makes us all laugh for ten minutes afterward. Lucky thing I am so quick with my phone; I recorded this moment.

This video is now on my go-to video for when I am sad, happy, hungry, angry, hangry, you name it (that one and one of my mom singing “I believe, I believe, I believe” in a funny voice as her hair hangs in her face). I push play again and again on my phone and think about how strong and amazing she is. I am lucky to have a mother filled with such love and goofiness. I hope that it will shine through me.