 |
| My Kiddos at EPCOT 2011 |
There are exactly six days until the fullness of this school year marks away the days on my calendar with the inky reminders about games and practices, meetings and projects like Xs, they count them down. Six days and I will be chasing any available white space in order to pencil in quiet family moments. My children are growing up, it’s an undeniable fact.
We returned from our Walt Disney World vacation nearly a week ago now and we’re still playing catch up. There are meals to plan, papers to sign, lunches to pack, and practices to blacken my coveted white space. I am a child at heart and I can’t help but feel the elevation of childhood memories, the hopes and dreams surfacing in my own heart as I watch my babies grow. I watched as they immersed themselves in the imaginary world create by the magic of Disney. I watched as their eyes light up during the fireworks as they burst over Cinderella’s Castle, or when Mickey Mouse defeated Maleficent in the show, Fantasmic. For those brief moments I pushed away all the details of our daily lives that are now threatening to chip away at the white space.
For these six days I am choosing to take these moments and with them pause, allowing them to soak into my skin like a wine stain on the living room carpet, and wear them like the invisible kiss hidden in the right hand corner of Wendy’s mother’s mouth, from the Peter Pan story. This year in particular will mark me in a way that the others have not. My eldest daughter begins her senior year with much celebration, and a longing to cling to the last moments of her childhood before leaping toward adulthood. My sweet middle child is experiencing the changes only a 12 year old girl knows. She’s becoming a woman, but her heart remains childlike, and her eyes filled with wonder. She’s navigating the world of middle school with hesitation and hope. She’s in for an awfully big adventure. My youngest entered his final year of elementary school. It’s the last year of play grounds and a single class room for math and reading, desks instead of lockers and recess every day after lunch. I have to admit, the Kindergarteners are much smaller than mine were, or so it seems.
As a Mother I couldn’t be more proud of my children, of their successes and the attempts they have made to learn from their failures. I see their efforts to become the people they were created to be by battling who they don’t wish to become through the choices that they make. Each will craft a story I have yet imagined. Though I can’t help having concerns, I am holding tight to the knowledge that there is an author that knows the beginning from the end, whose hand is in the daily workings of their lives, and he will guide them beyond my reach, though my prayers will always go with them tucked inside their pockets like the mama kisses I used to leave on their hands when I would go out. Now they’re the ones going out.
Six days, and for these six days I will live in the white spaces, the quiet moments before the barrage of practices and games take it from me. I have chosen to be present in these moments, to shut off the blackberry, to keep the laptop closed, the T.V. off and allow the time that I spend with my children etch memories onto my soul, and forever remember that,
“All children, except one, grow up.”
All Peter Pan References are from J.M. Barrie's book, Peter Pan
