there are some days when you just feel everything so acutely. like the actual passage of each minute is felt right on the heart and beats in the palm of your hand.
i think this is especially true when you have children.
when i look at my kids i see so much. oh, the usual visual signs. wingman has grown nearly an inch since january and desperately needs new baseball cleats. the duke looks like he's about a minute from just bursting fully forth into adolescence.
but it's the other things, too. like the way wingman sets his lips when he's trying to be a little dramatic. like checking his watch, he'll do that to mask the fact that it takes him a little while to understand what time it really is. he makes a big show of it, getting a laugh. all the while he's trying to decipher the hands and remember which tells the minute and which tells the hour. he thinks i don't know this is why he does that lip thing.
and he does this now, but i can very well see a day when he won't. not only will he not do it anymore because telling time will become second nature, but also he'll just forget to remember that it was his "thing." and he'll find something new, something more age appropriate as he ages, something different as his dramatic affectation. he is, after all, the younger brother, the baby, and does have a certain responsibility in that area.
and the duke being so close to becoming a very different person for awhile, maybe forever, as he approaches such a huge physical and mental change. part of me feels the want we both have to just stave it off a bit. while the other part of me is interested in knowing who the young man inside of the boy is. and i suspect the duke is intrigued, too.
but i know that standing at that precipice does have the potential to cease to be as "intriguing," and perhaps even become a challenge. or even a struggle as he actually falls headlong into it. for both of us.
and i'm always amazed how life can move so slowly when you're waiting on the big things. the what ifs. the decisions that may make or break you. the miracles you seek, or try to make.
but for the biggest things of all, the most important and in my case my children, life just moves so fast. too fast. and there just doesn't seem to be as much time as you want.
and one would think that being home together all day might give an advantage in that area. but i don't think so. because in between being the mother and the teacher and the chief cook and bottle washer time gets sucked up. and there are some days i forget to look up, to look around.
and when i think to look up, i realize that wingman has grown nearly an inch since january and the duke is about one minute from becoming an adolescent.
this is the stuff they don't write about in the parenting books. at least none i've ever read. sure, they tell you what you can expect in terms of growth and change at each stage of life, sometimes they even delve into the emotional landscape at different ages.
they just never tell you that with that growth and change there is this acute awareness that all of it is a means to an end of sorts. that in your mind and in your heart they are always your babies, but not so in theirs.
that while they are growing, for the parent it's a growing away, and for the child it's a growing towards.
at least for me it is. because while i celebrate them getting bigger and growing older, i know i'm the only one in the parent child relationship who finds the whole thing terribly bittersweet. and some days wholly and completely heartbreaking. they forget to tell you that in the books.
good lord! i think i've just stumbled on the very reason for the existence of small, well dressed dogs in the life of the empty nester.
/shudder.
in other news, NEW WINE BLOG TONIGHT! woo hoo! i'd give you a hint but you'd just laugh and think i've finally lost it. (which may or may not be true) so you'll have to tune in and see for yourself.
x.
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