My little girls are growing up...

I have never been afraid of change. In fact most of the time I quite enjoy it, even welcome it into my life…change has never been a huge issue for me. At 17 I chose to go to a university 15 hours from where I had lived my whole life. Change. I changed my major at least 14,000 times; in fact I remember a slightly terse conversation with my father where he indicated that perhaps I should declare in order to have my next semester paid for…I quickly decided, a lot of change there. Then after I graduated I changed my entire focus, and went to graduate school in something…somewhat related…but really? Not so much. Change again. I had kids, which at one point I was really adamant about not doing … and it changed my entire life, my entire being really. So as you see, I kind of look at change as just another adventure. Change isn’t what trips me up…it’s the moving on part.

I said I went to college 15 hour from home, but I cried until Late September missing my friends. I LOVED my school, and my new friends mind you, but I felt like I was leaving something major behind. When I got engaged, and it looked like Jamie was actually going to go through with marrying me and not run away arms flailing and screaming, I had this over whelming sense of sorrow… (Jamie is shaking his head saying NICE, Leia) Not over the getting married part, but how my relationship with my parents was going to be totally different. I believe that I actually grieved over that. Every time I see another stage of my life coming to an end… it seems to me, I have a hard time letting go. I literally mourn the loss. It isn’t that I am not looking forward to the new adventures coming my way, or the change of events, it's just that I loved the adventures that I have had, and I have a hard time letting go of them. People close to me just placate me by saying I am "passionate" about life...everything is BIG.

So you say, “WHY is she torturing me with this stupidness?” Well, here is why. I was watching my girls wave to me as they rode off on the bus this morning, and it hit me…holy crap, they aren’t little anymore. I mean they are still under my care for better or worse until 18 do we part…But they are in a new stage now. It occurs to me that I have been so preoccupied with the boy being a prominent 2…and my little girls started to grow up right under my nose!

The saddest part? I cannot even remember their chubby little faces at 2. I vaguely can, but it is like a word on the tip of your tongue that you just can’t quite say…I can remember it, but it is so fuzzy that it is hard to actually picture it…

I walked up stairs to get the diaper bag, and at the top of my stairs, I see a poem that my mother had framed for me when I graduated from college…and I cried…

And since misery loves company, here it is:
A Red Shirt- Margaret Atwood

You really should read it, it is good...not sad really, but a wonderful poem....and today, I feel lucky to be raising two beautiful girls, and how lucky they are to have such a long line of strong women to look to in their world.