Cliches

Cliches are cliche because they happen often enough to make them truths. My favorite these days is the one about how fast your kids grow up (you pick your favorite - "time flies", "in the blink of an eye..."). When I was pregnant with my first child, every wise parent told me, "Oh it just goes so fast and before you know it, you're dropping them off at college!" I always smiled graciously and thought to myself, "Um, that's EIGHTEEN years - I doubt that feels like an 'instant'!"
While it has not been 18 years, it has been 7 and I now know that the famous adage about the passage of time is most certainly true. Where have the 7 years gone? Much of them are lost in a blur of diapers and spitup.
Time is also not slowed by my precocious daughter who loves to talk about how old she's getting and how fast. "Ya know mom," she says, "in 6 more years, I'll be a teenager" or "Ya know mom, in 9 more years, I'll have a driver's license." Or my ALL-TIME favorite (OMG!) - "Ya know mom, in like 10 years, I'll be a MOM and you'll be a GRANDMOTHER!" My reply to this is always, "better make it 20 years, honey."
My mother is getting a kick out of this since she endured a similar time-traveler in her house. Every child has a line that they remember their parents saying to them over and over during their childhood. The line from my childhood was "be here now." I thought it was really dumb at the time ("where the hell else would I be, Ma?"), but like many other wise things my mother said to me, I find this line spilling from my mouth with my own offspring. (Note: the line is usually followed by a horrified 'oh my god! did I just say that?)
As I am writing this, she ran over to me and said, "I can't wait for THURSDAY!" No signs of this slowing down!
Yes, I admit I was a bit like this as a child, although I think I only got ahead of myself by one birthday, not 6. This careful planning of my future actually serves me pretty well as an adult while I plan for the future of our family and business. The only difference is I am now trying to make my birthdays go backwards!
So, my responsibility as a mom is the same as what my own mom tried to do. To help my daughter to appreciate her current state of being, to stop and smell the roses so to speak, to focus on today and making it all it can be, all this balanced with an appreciation that she does contemplate her future and what her life will be like. It is important for her to explore that. To wonder and to be excited about the opportunities that await her.

It is, like most other parenting issues, a high wire act.

I was never formally taught the craft of high wire walking. I had no training and most of the time there is no net. It is a high stakes game. What we do have to rely on are our instincts, the fabulous resources we have in fellow parents who have 'walked the wire' , the support of our families (this is the invisible safety net). At the end of each day, when we've made it across the wire and we gear up to do it all over again, we've learned a little more about it and found our footing a bit more today. Who knows, maybe in the near future, we'll be ready to try to ride a bike across the high wire!

For anyone wondering, the picture at the top is of me (probably around age 4 or 5) and Kayleigh is right below...maybe some of my genes are in there somewhere!
Much love.