The other evening I looked across my dining table at my Miss10 and noticed her elbows were resting as wide apart as my own. It startled me; the revelation that she wasn’t a ‘little kid’ anymore.
I shook my head, and said, “Do you know, it wasn’t that long ago when you [Miss10] were on a booster seat; you [Master9] were in a high chair; and you [Miss VERY MUCH 13, JUDGING BY THE ATTITUDE] were seated on a normal chair, with your chin just past the height of the table.”
The cherubs looked at me quizzically. “What’s a booster seat?” asked Miss10.
I sighed. Those memories, all seemingly so recent in my own mind, I had assumed were all-pervasive in my children’s too, but no. I shook my head again, then answered.
But in the back of my mind, the realisation that they were growing up, far more quickly than I had given them credit for, petrified me. My own Dad has always said, “Turn around twice and they’ll be grown” and I’d laughed and nodded indulgently. But suddenly I understood.
You get busy, life happens, and then suddenly, when you stop and notice, they’re grown and their elbows on the dining table are the same distance apart as your own. And you were so busy ‘doing’ the journey that you didn’t realise that the journey WAS happening! And yes, by ‘you’ I definitely mean ‘me’.
So I’ve decided that, like I tell my students all the time, to ‘wake up to yourself’ – I need to do this. I need to ‘wake up’ and take notice that, while all this life is happening, it REALLY IS HAPPENING and I would do well to pay attention and enjoy it while I have the opportunity!
How about you, dear Reader? Had any startling revelations lately?
And have a great week!
–KRidwyn