My 44th Birthday and my daughter's 1st kiss...
Well, today is my 44th birthday and last night was my daughter's 1st kiss.
Aly and Mason were celebrating their one year anniversary of dating. I told Mason I wanted them to wait to kiss for a year so that they could focus on other more important aspects of their relationship. They honored that request and last night he kissed her. As they returned from their date and Mason left to head home, Aly came into our bedroom and all the sisters piled on the bed with Heidi and I as she shared how things went. I'll spare you the details...it's not my story to tell.
But the story that is mine to tell is the way I felt as I realized that life was advancing forward despite my best efforts to hold it back. I don't know what it is, but I feel like I want to guard stages of life that once you leave you can never revisit, at least not in the same way. It's not like angels wielding swords won't let you back into the garden, but there is something akin to that that happens when we leave innocence and participate in the next delicacy. There will never again be a first in that choice. So the first is a line that is crossed. You will never wonder what it's like, you will only evaluate what it was like. I'm not against crossing those lines, I just value them so much more as I age. I have come to realize that the wonder and innocence on the front side is a beautiful thing and once you cross over into "knowing" you can't go back by "unknowing", so to move slowly toward immersing yourself in every adventure and experience of euphoria is my advice. It will come eventually and when it does, there will be nothing but that for the rest of your life.
The coincidence that I was turning 44 at the stroke of midnight 30 minutes after she was sharing that she had her first kiss was just a strange intermingling of events. I felt old...not in a "I hate my life" sort of way, but in a way that makes me feel like my life is moving so fast and slipping through my fingers. My daughters are slipping through my fingers. My family as I know it is ever-changing and moving toward splintering off into their own respective worlds filled with work, friends, and eventually the construction of their own families. Even as they still occupy our home, the process is afoot, the leaving and cleaving has already commenced in some subtle ways. I'm grateful for it and I loathe it. I wish them well as the grow and move into their futures, but I wish to return to when life was simpler and purer. When their worlds were small and the whole of their attention was centered on trivial things like play time, nap time, dinner time, and bedtime. What they were going to do in our house or yard. Whether we were going to take them to the lake or the park or the library or the mall. We largely were the ones who chose where they would go and what they would do, now they are exerting agency of their own lives and our contribution is more steering them than moving them. As it should be, but still.
So as I celebrate my 44th birthday and Aly celebrates her 1st kiss, the paradoxes of life increase with a frequency and intensity that hits me between the brisket bone and the backbone. Deep in the core of my being I know there is no going back and at the same time I wouldn't want to...it leaves me suspended in the "in between".
This is where I am today. In between the past and the future. It happens to be called the present.
Aly and Mason were celebrating their one year anniversary of dating. I told Mason I wanted them to wait to kiss for a year so that they could focus on other more important aspects of their relationship. They honored that request and last night he kissed her. As they returned from their date and Mason left to head home, Aly came into our bedroom and all the sisters piled on the bed with Heidi and I as she shared how things went. I'll spare you the details...it's not my story to tell.
But the story that is mine to tell is the way I felt as I realized that life was advancing forward despite my best efforts to hold it back. I don't know what it is, but I feel like I want to guard stages of life that once you leave you can never revisit, at least not in the same way. It's not like angels wielding swords won't let you back into the garden, but there is something akin to that that happens when we leave innocence and participate in the next delicacy. There will never again be a first in that choice. So the first is a line that is crossed. You will never wonder what it's like, you will only evaluate what it was like. I'm not against crossing those lines, I just value them so much more as I age. I have come to realize that the wonder and innocence on the front side is a beautiful thing and once you cross over into "knowing" you can't go back by "unknowing", so to move slowly toward immersing yourself in every adventure and experience of euphoria is my advice. It will come eventually and when it does, there will be nothing but that for the rest of your life.
The coincidence that I was turning 44 at the stroke of midnight 30 minutes after she was sharing that she had her first kiss was just a strange intermingling of events. I felt old...not in a "I hate my life" sort of way, but in a way that makes me feel like my life is moving so fast and slipping through my fingers. My daughters are slipping through my fingers. My family as I know it is ever-changing and moving toward splintering off into their own respective worlds filled with work, friends, and eventually the construction of their own families. Even as they still occupy our home, the process is afoot, the leaving and cleaving has already commenced in some subtle ways. I'm grateful for it and I loathe it. I wish them well as the grow and move into their futures, but I wish to return to when life was simpler and purer. When their worlds were small and the whole of their attention was centered on trivial things like play time, nap time, dinner time, and bedtime. What they were going to do in our house or yard. Whether we were going to take them to the lake or the park or the library or the mall. We largely were the ones who chose where they would go and what they would do, now they are exerting agency of their own lives and our contribution is more steering them than moving them. As it should be, but still.
So as I celebrate my 44th birthday and Aly celebrates her 1st kiss, the paradoxes of life increase with a frequency and intensity that hits me between the brisket bone and the backbone. Deep in the core of my being I know there is no going back and at the same time I wouldn't want to...it leaves me suspended in the "in between".
This is where I am today. In between the past and the future. It happens to be called the present.
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