It starts from the time they are born:
A self-imposed, invisible stop-watch, pushing you to jump from phase to phase with barely a breath.
When they are newborns, you want them to balance their heads, roll over, and sit up.
Before they even crawl, you are thinking about pushing them to walk next.
As toddlers, it’s hard not to compare them to other kids you see.
That one already knows his letters?!
*pulls out notepad*
*writes “Buy flash-cards” in it*
That baby can’t even focus their eyes, or find a breast without wild head-bobbing,
and there you are thinking about what school you’ll put them in.
We all do it, I think.
Milestones are natural to consider, and an important thing to gauge.
We take one step, then think of the next naturally,
But, after years of doing just that,
today I looked at my calendar, and realized I only have six weeks left.
In the first week of June my two middle daughters graduate high school.
We’ve always just called these two “The Girls,” even though we have four of them.
These two feel like a package deal. They shared clothes, and have always been neck-and-neck.
This fact is yet another reason people think that they are twins.
They aren’t the same age.
They are 21 months apart, actually,
but my 16 year old, Tessa, started kindergarten early, and then skipped 3rd grade as well, landing her in the same grade as her older sister.
They attend different schools, which will at least allow me to concentrate, one at a time, on each of them separately as they cross their stages and I wail into a bullhorn from the bleachers at them.
The oldest will graduate on a Thursday, and the next one two days later, after a brief puffy-eyed break.
There have been a lot of emotions going into this season.
High school has been a difficult time for both of them.
One part of me feels sadness for the quickness of time,
one part of me feels relief to even have gotten here after some of the things I’ve gone through with them;
But, in the last few weeks, pictures have started popping up on my phone of their little faces all through the years, and it’s pulled me in directions I don’t feel ready to go.
For once, I’m not racing to take the next step.
I stare at their baby-teeth-smiles, and their still-innocent eyes,
and I just want to be able to pause time, and to quietly sit with them a bit.
The other day my 13 year old casually said,
“…and in 5 years, even I will be an adult!”
She has always loved facts, but that rude one could have gone unsaid.
It came from the mouth of a person who is now almost as tall as me.
It sent me back tumbling through all the years;
Back through every step I hurried to take,
back through every feeling of being overwhelmed,
back through hundreds of frustrated bed-times,
and back through begging them to PLEASE sit still.
It sent me back through little girls balanced on the countertop, grimacing, as I tried to do their hair,
bugs in my Tupperware containers,
toys like an explosion,
me announcing they were never allowed to have slime ever again;
Them fighting over Barbies, and learning to play instruments,
The questionable phase Tessa had at three years old where she would only color things black or red…
Then I look at them now, these beautiful young women, driving, and going on dates,
and I start to wonder how we got here;
Until I realize we got here by me running them to one thing, then the next.
In being so pressured to hurry, do more, be more,
I realize that maybe I’m the one that carried them so quickly here.
It’s impossible to recognize, when you are in it, how fast it goes.
People only talk about it happening in a blink when looking back.
I spend these days contemplating what I would have done differently, had I known.
It has taken having a granddaughter to see the other side of it.
I understand things I didn’t understand then.
This is why grandparents feed the ice cream, and bend down real low.
This is why they are known for softer hands and softer laps.
It takes years of rushing down the path to see the beauty in going slow,
but you only see it once you’ve already gotten closer to the path’s end.
The other day, while straightening my house, I found two rocks my granddaughter, Mavis, had left on my ottoman.
It made me smile to see her little calling-card, no-doubt collected on some snail-paced toddler walk.
Rocks are her current greatest passion,
and the fact that she’d left them there with me felt like a sign of love:
Something precious I was being trusted with.
I paused for a minute, looking at them just laying there,
thinking about years of coming apon things like that in my home, things carried in from little hands:
Some little treasure they’d found outside, a leaf, a dried up dandelion…
I thought of the years when those things felt much more like clutter than gifts.
I see things so much differently now that I’ve learned how fast the years go.
Now I see them as a reminder that it’s OK to take it slow.
It’s OK to wander in fields, and to bend over and look at bugs.
It’s OK to go at your family’s own pace.
It’s OK if other people on the path beat you to the end.
Take your time!
It’s OK to take a walk and zig-zag as you go.
You will get there no matter what.
Children understand it’s important to enjoy even the simplest things.
For some reason, that’s a hard thing for adults,
But, take in the sun, and the birds, and the trees.
They’re all whizzing by so fast.
What feels like a long journey uphill will be viewed differently once you reach the top.
That race to the finish you’re on?
One day you will wish you zig-zagged, and maybe even picked up a couple of rocks.
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.
