Archive for parenting
Growing Up Together
Posted by: | CommentsWe had a hard wooden couch with cushions that were covered in green gaudy flowers. I was sitting cross legged across from my best friend drinking a Dr. Pepper. We were both panicked and nervous as we tried to figure out the best way to tell my mom I was pregnant.
I am walking into the same school that I went to many years ago. My son walks in front of me and we search out his classroom, his desk and his first ever locker.
After kisses and hugs and a billion “I love yous;” I head home to start my work day. I sit at my desk for a while and try to figure out where the time went but for once it made so much sense.
He waved for the first time when I was headed to class at a junior college. He was learning to crawl and listening to Dora in the background as I cooked dinner and did homework. He was taking first steps as I ran out the door to work nights at the bar. There were trips to the zoo and moves to new houses and first words and vacations and changes.
I feel like it was just yesterday when I was bringing him home from the hospital.
But at the very same time I feel like that was another lifetime.
The truth is, we grew up together, my child and me.
As he learned to walk and talk and go potty on the big boy potty I learned about school and growing up and friends and first jobs and careers.
Last December I graduated from college and this summer, the summer after college was un-eventful and fast and quiet and we both waded in the pool that life changes are.
And now he is off to kindergarten.
It doesn’t feel like a major life change, but maybe that is because we have had so many major life changes in the past five years that they come and go with little notice.
It simply feels like a next step. It is time for him to learn reading and writing and math and it time for me to learn…to learn…to learn things that adults do?
I imagine that my relationship with my child is different than most mother/son relationships. In the same way that I am protective of him he seems to protect me. In the same way I am learning new steps and new moves he is too.
We grow together and learn from each other and I feel like one day we are going to look back on this journey and see how big it really was.
Summer Days.
Posted by: | CommentsI was laying on my lawn chair with a book in hand while he splashed in the kiddie pool. Suddenly my legs were covered in drops of cold pool water and my book was slightly damp.
He was making a wave pool.
Running in circles faster and faster. Each time around the pool he was giggling a little harder and I was covered in a little more water.
I was trying to read my book and the sun was in my eyes. There was a bug crawling a little to close to my glass of water and I couldn’t get my clothes wet because I had to coach t-ball in a couple of hours.
Suddenly, I am telling him to stop running. Quit splashing. I DON’T WANT TO GET WET.
And then I looked up and he was sitting there in the pool with the biggest smile on his face as the waves moved around him slowly.
Suddenly it hit me.
This isn’t going to be forever.
He won’t always be this small. Making waves in his inflatable pool wont always be the highlight of his day.
I will be sitting outside wondering where the squealing child went and why my book is so dry.
And I smiled back at him and told him to keep going.
Make the waves.
I don’t know why it takes these moments to remind me of how fast childhood passes.
