It seems that just yesterday we were snuggled on the couch reading C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series and negotiating for a delayed bedtime after reading one more chapter. The three of us read nightly until the seven books were crinkled and dog eared.
Now my darling Derek goes to bed each night in Iowa after studying Actuarial Science and working as a level-two Geek at Best Buy. Derek turns twenty-one today. He is working and has no big plans for his birthday except to put his birthday money in savings. The birthday in his first year of college he requested that I bake and mail an apple pie to him to celebrate the occasion. The request did not come this year or last, I guess he has grown past that need. We talk often on MSN Messenger. I have two contacts, my children. I enjoy the moments and sometimes hours that we message back and forth. We talk about things that need to be said and need to be heard. It is priceless time and valued dearly by me. He is an accomplished, hard-working, respectable man. It is with joyful agony that I watch as he walks his own path and finds his own way. I know that he is guided, as I am, by the ones that have gone before us.
Sweet Whitney started high school this fall. She studies French, upper level math and science and is dreaming of her driver's permit (just a few months away). She no longer crawls in bed with me in the wee hours of the morning and her goodbye kiss as I drop her off at school has become a head leaned towards me so that I may plant a lip-stick-free smooch on the top of her chunked, bleached blond. She is a growing up before my eyes and I am puzzled at where the years have gone. I am grateful for our daily contacts because I am honored to witness the frequent, rapid changes. My life is blessed by my interactions with her.It must be that every parent (person) comes to this place...the overwhelming awe and wonderment of "how it all happened so fast." I have to admit that I am struggling with the intense emotion attached to my engorging awareness of the fragile, temporariness of this life. I have to remind myself that there is a time and season for everything. If I really focus, look inside myself, and listen, I hear and feel the memories flow over me like water. We have moved through the moments together...shared the joy, sorrow, sweetness, ravaging grief, pride, fear, hesitancy, terror, triumph, love and deep, deep acceptance. The blessings of motherhood (humanity?) have, and continue to be mine. Today, I am grateful.
