The Bitter and The Sweet

It's near September and schools around here won't start until after Labor Day weekend.

I'm now a parent that has to know about school starting and stuff.

Can I take a moment and point out how strange that feels?

Having a kindergartener is like finding out you're pregnant for the first time. So insignificant to the other people walking around this world yet so incredibly monumental on your own timeline. Life changing and chapter closing. The choice of welcoming the change and the letting go that always follows.

Did you know,

I gave birth to beings and they get older every day?

the Vaisey's do the Fairport library

I am young and old and wise and inexperienced.

Wasn't I just 19?

Lately the realization of my oldest child's childhood slipping away has really begun to sink in.

Also I should point out here, my pessimistic tendencies.

When it's the end of the day and I am exhausted beyond measure and I can't do dinner, and I don't want to do bedtime and if one more child asks me for something(!!), and I can't remember the last moments to myself that didn't involve laundry and very late nights, it's hard to see past to tomorrow.

I want them to grow up and stay small all at the same time. I am self-diagnosed with Motherhood Bipolar Disorder. I long for quiet and peace and order, but really enjoy the baby's fat face and the boy's tender sweetness and her lispy clever-talk- those things that can only be found in small ones. But I need them to grow up so I can feel sane. I need to feel in control of something again.

I know growing up brings so many great things. I know we will go on family vacations without diapers or crying babies, go to soccer games and spelling bees, drop off dapper young teens at school dances and cry over first heartbreaks. And I bet sometimes, then, I will be alone. Alone! Imagine that? I can and I can't wait.

But then.

Then they go to sleep and something magical happens.

I stare at their little faces and have that familar overwhelming feeling of peace wash over me. It consumes my soul and I remember in that instant what it's all for. It feels like a Mack Truck. My chest feels heavy and I'm breathless and thankful and my eyes welt up all at once. I am newly inspired to be better and to be everything I can be for them. I will move mountains. I am undeserving and they are so cute and small and I am so happy to be needed. So grateful to be needed.

That's why God invented sleeping children.

It is sometimes only then that I get to revel in the greatest cliché ever thought up:

They grow up so fast.

There, I said it.

Now I can have time to enjoy it while it is here and eventually let it go and welcome change. It's the rejoicing and the mourning and it's the bitter but the oh so sweetness of parenthood. It's the stuff I'm still trying to figure out.