Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength. – Sigmund Freud
Life is a process. We are a process. The universe is a process. – Anne Wilson Schaef
For example: Whit has been sleeping like an absolute NIGHTMARE (and you optimists thought I was going to say charm) in his new bed. I’m sleep deprived in a way that reminds me of nothing less than those awful first newborn days. And yet I go in when he is up in the night and rock him and he falls limp in my arms and I try to remind myself of how quickly these days go. How soon he won’t want me in his room at all, how quickly both of them will be barricaded behind doors wedged shut, sitting at their computers IMing with pals I have never met and friending people on Facebook.
How soon those days will come and how wistful I will be then for these very days. For right now. How come that doesn’t help me live here, now? Once in a while, I find I am able to do that. Yesterday morning, I did. We had the most splendid Sunday morning, the three of us – we went for a long stroll, got coffee, bumped into friends, played aimlessly, chatted, walked into the Square, got lemonade, laughed. It was sunny (both the weather and everyone’s moods), it was relaxed, it was unstructured, and it was absolutely perfect. If only every Sunday morning could be like yesterday!
On the note of fledgling independence, here is a picture of Grace running at Hadley’s that I love because it looks, to me, like she is on the verge of taking flight. And, indeed, she is, right?
me: “Grace, you know, in one week it will be my birthday”
G: “Really, Mummy?”
me: “Yes, it will. Do you think I’m old?”
G: “No.”
me: “Do you think I’m young?”
G: “No.”
pause
G: “I think you are medium.“
If that’s not the definition of middle-aged, I’m not sure what is!
*****************
me: “Grace, thank you for being so well behaved today. I really appreciated the way you didn’t whine, you listened, and you cooperated.”
G: “You’re welcome, Mummy.” (with smug, know-it-all smile)
me: “Gracie, on days like this you make me want to be the best Mummy I can be for you.”
G: “Well, Mummy, you make me want to be the best daughter I can be for you.”
Tears blurring vision on Route 1.
Had a great dinner last night at the Blue Room with Kara and Bouff. It was ostensibly to celebrate my birthday (see cupcakes above which the girls adorably brought) but that didn’t feel fair as Kara just had a birthday and Bouff just took the bar! Passages all around.
It’s soul-edifying to be with Kara and Bouff; I feel definitively less alone just for having seen them. I am both blessed and proud to call such intelligent, engaged, thoughtful, funny, irreverent women my dear friends. It is still kind of a wonder to me that we are all mothers at this point, not to mention that Kara is a doctor and Bouff a lawyer! How far we’ve come from the drunken land of orange & black, dancing in the kitchen suite, and YY Doodles … and yet how close to that we remain. Thank God!