The other day while my sister-in-law was visiting, as I was out of the room checking on the dinner, Baylie took her first toddling steps into the void. I, who am with her nearly every waking moment, turned my back for two minutes, and missed it. She has not ventured out again since, so I am sure there will be many more tentative steps to come, so I couldn't figure out why it made me sad.
I guess it is because it seems like a metaphor for what my life is like. I am always here, and yet often feel as though I am missing it. My memories of Morgan's babyhood are hazy, and, though it seems in the moment that Baylie is frozen in time, her current stage of development so all consuming that it blocks out all else, she changes daily, before my eyes. Mine is now a world devoid of toothless grins and stay puff marsh mellow rolls. I am faced with it: there will be no more littles. While all my friends continue to procreate away, I am done (unless of course God has other plans!). This by choice; I am eager for the days of freedom from nap times, with museum outings, symphonies in the park, and easier camping trips where no one has to nurse at night; none the less, the thought is a little sad.
I get so wrapped up in orchestrating the minutia that is our day to day life, that the magic of what a friend of mine calls "whimsy" often passes me by; not because of absence, but because in the whirlwind of motherhood, I can not hold on to the perspective that childhood is as fleeting as a poppy's bloom, and that in it's wake, I will look back, and my children will have been fearfully and wonderfully made, right in front of me, and I will have missed it.
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