Watching your child grow up is like opening a perfectly selected gift and eating the last bite of ice cream.
It’s a delightful privilege and a blessing.
And it’s wrought with grief.
Seven.
So much bigger than six.
Six is first grade. Just out of kindergarten, still little enough to run up and hug and kiss your mom with reckless abandon when she volunteers in your classroom.
Seven is starting to put your own stickers on your lego sets.
I think having two children in two completely different relationships… in two completely different lives… and nearly 8 years apart has given me a front row seat to the vast difference between an 8 and a 0. A 14 and a 6.
When the second was born, it was like deja vu only more like trying to remember the details of a dream. Familiar, but a little strange. The diapers were over here. The couch was over there, and a different color.
Last night, as I snuggled my little 6 to sleep, he said he was going to miss his six year old self.
I told him he would always be in there and not to forget that.
But my guts twisted a bit at the thought. I try not to think about the end of sloppy wet kisses and hugs that squeeze so tight they actually hurt sometimes. The smallness of his voice and the words he mispronounces that I hate to ever correct.
The perpetually grimy fingers as he focuses intently on some task.
Being a mother has brought my greatest joys and my deepest sorrows.
Spontaneous I love yous, bedtime conversations, shared delight at the antics of our pets.
Pain I cannot take away, problems I cannot solve, a world I cannot make better for them.
I hated nearly everything about being pregnant. I was nauseous and uncomfortable and itchy.
But I loved feeling them move, and I loved knowing (or at least having the illusion of knowing) I could keep them safe with me.
Now they run around and make their own choices with varying degrees of wisdom… without any regard for the fact that they carry within them my whole heart.
