Tomorrow my baby, Paige, turns nine years old.
Nine – So much less round than eight.
It sounds too old when I say it, so today I begged for her to just let me pay her to stay eight for one more year.
“I don’t think that’s even possible,” she rolled her eyes.
“Sure it is,” I said. “You just take the cash I hand you, and when people ask, you just say the words, ‘I am eight years old’ for at least 365 more days.”
There’s something about watching the baby walk ahead, and the way the path in the field appears to close up after them like the bottom of a zipper,
nestling everything you love inside.
How you were just holding their hand to steady them,
but now you can’t see where they’ve gone for the grass.
It feels like with 8 go all the days of the me that I recognize.
I don’t know myself without little kids.
In their childhoods I have seen my full self, and I struggle to see myself beyond this.
Paige was born at 5pm.
Party time and Quitting time.
So fitting for the girl she is.That time feels by design. That time feels like it told who she is.
Soon after she was born I developed a life-threatening blood clot, and that meant that for her first months, I would just sit and hold her up to my chest all day.
I was her whole world, and it felt like she was mine.
The older girls have always been more independent of me,
but Paige has clung to my side. She has a fierce little warrior side.
It’s something I admire so much.
I remember my mother once telling me that each of my daughters represented a different part of me,
and that brave warrior has been a part of me lately that I have been most desperate to see.
I told her last night as we lay in her bed that I was not ready for this new age,
and that I’d rather she just stay my baby awhile longer,
and that is when she nestled up to me and said,
“I have to grow. It’s what people should do. But it’s OK, Mama, I won’t leave you behind.
You will always be a part of me. That’s how it works.
We will all grow taller, and older, and also more full of things in our hearts and our minds,
but you will be one of those things always. I promise you. You don’t have to cry.”
In her answer I saw my hands helping her plant something, and showing her how to dig her fingertips in. The waiting, the sign of life, and flowering.
Then her morphing and becoming the whole, beautiful garden bed.
When Paige was turning three she announced that that age sounded too strange,
so she insisted she would be turning 10 instead, and for a whole year we kept up that charade.
We even went so far as to put a number 10 candle on top of her birthday cake.
The people at the restaurant we celebrated at made some interesting faces at that tiny kid claiming such an age, but we all clapped and cheered and just let her be it.
That memory will always make me smile.
I also won’t forget the time we went to a playground and I had to remove her from the park, for attempting to hit a teenager who laughed at her when she told him how old she was.
“There’s no way you’re ten” were his famous last words, and
head reaching only his belly button, she socked him right in the gut.
I know violence is not the answer, and I told her that on that day,
but I have to admit it was real hard to keep a straight face as I said it.
She was what she was,
and no one was going to take that away.
Maybe since she skipped it, I’ll get to cash in on 3 next year.
She already did 10. I let her have her fun.
Next year belongs to me.
One of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingslover, once said,
“But the last one, the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after – Oh, that’s love by a different name.
She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep.
If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away.”
And Oh, I want her to fly.
I do.
Just…maybe not tonight.
I still want to stare at her sleeping eyelashes with only the glow of a night-light.
I want her asking me to read to her.
I still want her climbing into my lap.
I let her be 10, so she owes me one, and I plan to cash in on that.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
