Baby Steps

It seems like only yesterday, (yet a hundred years ago), that I was toting three children around- balancing my baby boy on a hip while holding hands with my two little girls that baby-stepped in slow motion...even when speed was of utmost importance.
Looking back, I wonder how I bathed, dressed and wiped their snotty noses in any sort of regularity. Because when you're a mom, the other stuff in life doesn't go on hold. You still must do dishes, laundry, shopping, cooking, cleaning and all those other things that existed before motherhood.

But something must have happened when I looked away...while I was cleaning the toilet or dusting the coffee table. I turned around and they were grown adults. How did they possibly baby step their way right out the door and into lives of their own without warning? How did I miss those thousands of hugs and kisses I meant to give them? The silly songs I forgot to sing or the pictures I failed to help them finger paint? I just wanted to braid their hair and straighten their collars and pack their lunches a few more years....I had hoped to become a good listener, a dependable secret-keeper...a better mom. And if I wasn't, it's simply because they grew up before I got enough practice.

Or at least I like to think that is why.

Within the past two years, I've watched each of my children get married. Branch out their hearts and encircle new love...clip their wings and apron strings and rarely look back.

I'm lucky. The life mates they chose compliment them. Their happiness has deepened. And I believe their understanding of parenthood has reached a higher level. I love them all so much.

But, I looked in the mirror this morning and realized that time is no longer baby stepping. It is racing like a huge tornado. It's quick like lightning and totally unrelenting. And though there are days when I still feel like that young mother whose suffers from sleep deprivation and has peanut butter and jelly under her fingernails, I realize I am no longer that person. I've rounded into a grandma. I've morphed into a mother-in-law. I've shrunk into the person I will be forever.

Because you see, time is also unforgiving. Once you reach a certain point, there are no second chances.

So, dear young mothers everywhere - enjoy those snotty noses and late nights in the rocking chair and crooked braids and skinned knees and a garage full of bicycles and basketballs, wet towels and ruined homework, and ...baby steps.
Don't rush. Don't complain.

And don't look away.