Did your children grow up, move on, find their own adventure?
It happens to nearly everyone, eventually. Almost universally our children will grow up and mature and gain independence and stop clinging to our legs. They will eventually stop talking with us when we are on the toilet and walking in for mundane reasons when we are in the shower. One day they will no longer reach a chubby little hand upwards toward ours while walking along the street and saddest of all, they will eventually stop crawling into our beds to plant their poky little feet into the lower parts of our backs.
How do I know all this? Because it is happening to me.
It’s pretty sad.
It is also pretty good which I guess is why I longed for it to happen for so many years.
Back when I had my first child, more than a decade ago, I really truly felt like my life would never be my own again. From the first moment I held my little bundle of baby girl, I knew that my heart, hands and life would be eternally devoted to her.
Not long after, this commitment was put rather harshly to the test when life with a newborn became a startling, exhausting reality. Flashbacks from my long labour mingled with non stop nappy changes and persistent, colicky crying. All of it covered in milk and actioned by my new, weary, child-changed body. This was my new, bleary all encompassing life and it required every ounce of my willpower and energy to adapt to it, but adapt I did.
So yes, bath times were no longer my own and dinner was ruined by interruptions and protests for 13 years straight but I have loved every single minute of it.
Except when I haven’t love it because I have been tired or exhausted or I have just needed my life back.
Well I have got it now, my life that is. Just for a little bit anyway, thanks to school and wonderful teachers and the burgeoning independence of my children. An hour here and a half day there. I can do whatever I please in whatever order and at whatever volume. I can even eat what I want when I want it, without sharing it 5 ways. My time is my own and so are my strawberries.
Which is why I am a little bit sad.
My girlfriend visited me for coffee the other day. We had a little tea party out in my garden, beside my new pool. Because all the kids are off at school we didn’t have to worry about someone accidentally falling into the water. Or getting too cold, or too tired, or hungry, or wanting to go to the toilet 15 times.
Both of us have little ones who are off in prep this year and finally, after a long time, we could meet without ice-creams and baby cinos and waving at Puffing Billy.
It was wonderful. We had a good, lengthy catch up on work, family, weddings and children without one single interruption, not even from an iconic steam train.
But after she left I did some maths.
We have known each other basically our whole lives. We met as babies and have stuck with each other ever since. So that is 38 years of friendship, only 12 of which we have spent with little children in tow. Twelve years is not a lot in the grand scheme of things, considering I once thought it would never end.
I miss it.
I know that there are a lot of great years to come too, as the children get older. But as time goes on, our kidlets are, and will be, less and less evident in our meet-ups.
Although I am sure we will ever stop talking about them.
It wasn’t forever though was it? Those days stuck at home with little children and spaghetti stains and piles of washing and loneliness. It was just for a little bit.
A little, precious, treasured bit.
Children are wonderful as they get older. What a pleasure and a blessing it is to see them grow and mature, express new ideas, play basketball and hang around at “the shops” with their friends (I am yet to understand the appeal of this one). But that other bit was wonderful too.
I for one, am really sad that those rich, glorious, exhausting, messy, awful, wonderful, mad days are over.
In the mean time I will just enjoy cuddling my new baby nephew and try not to cry too much when I look through photos of my own babies. Ill wait for the next adventure to open up and Ill try and remember to embrace it and enjoy it and be grateful for what has gone before.
And on these cold Winter nights where my 5 year old staggers sleep drunk and droopy down the hallway to find me because his feet are too cold, Ill let him jump in under the covers and warm his ice cold toes against me and Ill try not to cry out in annoyance. Because one day, it will be the last time it happens.
I’ll be thankful too for the friendships that endure through all the changes, and for those people who listen to me talk about it all.
You’ll have to excuse me though if I get a little teary when I see you cradling your little baby, or walking with a chubby toddler hand grasped in yours.
Anyone need a baby sitter?
Dani xx