Graduation

One day you’re agonizing over phonics programs and wondering if a half hour spent watching the the tadpoles in the storm water retention pond counts as science. The next, the mail comes and with it, your daughter’s high school graduation announcements.

Graduation, people. As in, “I’m not a high schooler anymore.”

True, true: she hasn’t really been doing what passes for high school level studies for a while. But the calendar says she’s 16, and my heart? Well, in my heart she will always be seven and obsessed with Little House on the Prairie, even going so far as to wear a bonnet (yes, a bonnet!) for months on end.

But calendars don’t tell the whole story. And the heart of a mother simply can’t be trusted when it comes to reflecting what stands before her when it comes to her children and their ability to survive outside the nest. When I distance myself, when I hear myself speak, I see the fuller picture: a young woman ready to move on, to shed the skin of “thou must do a math lesson because.” This is a young lady who has outpaced the need for the kind of accountability that cares only about credits earned and grade point averages. This is a woman– though young– who has exceeded our expectations and now needs the freedom to explore those things that make her heart beat fastest and her soul sing loudest.

She’s ready.

But me? Oh, I share her joy. I look at her beaming and listen to her dreams and find myself grinning from ear to ear. But the time has flown so fast. So, so fast. Older, wiser mothers warned me. They nodded knowingly as I lamented ages and stages, placed their hands on my arm in comfort and whispered, “Oh, honey. It will go by so quickly.” And I thought I knew. I thought I got it.

But you can’t, ever. Not really. Not when it’s your own child.

From the moment your child is born– your first, your third, your tenth– you look around at other people’s babies growing older and deny that it’s happening to you. Sure, you haven’t enjoyed a board book together in years, and it’s so cool that he or she can now grasp some of those deeper conversations of life, but … but that’s still your child. Still the baby you groaned into the world, or the little person whose face you memorized in a photograph long before the judge made your last names the same.

These children of ours … they are forever a sweet, terrible burden of love in our hearts. They grow up, they lose the gaps in their teeth, their shoes are suddenly bigger than yours. But they are your babies.

Mary Hannah is my sweet, beautiful, smart, funny child. The one who taught me to be a mother. The one who first showed me what it was to be here, in this moment, so fiercely in love that my whole heart threatens to burst into a million pieces. Even though her world is expanding by the minute, even though her next steps will be ones that prepare her, more than ever, for life outside the safe bubble that is our home, even though she is graduating, she is my baby.

And she always will be.

I link up posts with these wonderful hosts: Diamonds in the Rough, Life in a Breakdown, Sunday Best Showcase, Teach Beside Me, Finishing Strong, Mama Moment Monday, The Modest Mom, Mama Moments Mondays, Monday’s Musings, Making Your Home Sing Monday, Playdates at the Wellspring, A Pinch of Joy, Titus 2sday, Titus 2 Tuesday, Growing Homemakers, Babies & Beyond, Teaching What is Good, Missional Call