where to start on this one…..maybe the fact that I have promised my littles that I will never post about them, as they have all asked me not to. But I have to break the rules, just once a year.
I walked down to a neighbors house during spring break to collect my youngest from her house. She asked if we had plans for spring break and I mentioned that we usually just stay around here. Her son is one year younger than my daughter and she said ‘we usually do to, but it hit me…we only have three spring breaks left with him.’
I had a sinking feeling in my gut.
She’s turning sixteen.
two spring breaks left.
two summers left.
two holiday seasons where she will actually live under our roof.
two more birthdays at home.
In my head I still picture this little girl, with a short bob who was super quiet, was a perfectionist with her room and preschool art work, loved to have her hair in sponge rollers and waited anxiously for her daddy to get home from work.
But then I see a picture in her feed and it still stops me in my tracks, that can’t be the same little girl.
I continued to think, one month left to drive her to school, and pick her up.
It’s weird how sometimes carpool can seem so mundane and go.go.go And then you realize that that seat next to you, the one that has been filled with happy chatter or blubbering tears over the past 15 years, will be empty in your car in the mornings and after school.
You won’t get to have the 30 minute gossip session sitting in the parking lot, waiting on the first bell to ring. All of that little stuff, like our morning coffee runs and catching up on the day’s events during the ride home will be gone.
Sure, we will still have our non-stop daily, goofy texting in our own language. Or our moments when we might fight like cats and dogs and then be laying on the couch together, laughing so hard we are crying. Which husband still does not understand this.
But I will miss this. I already do, as quickly as her sophmore year has gone by. Summer is planned, Junior year is set and it is just baffling to me how fast it has gone by.
And how badly I want it to slow down.
16 years have literally gone by in a blink.
I am incredibly proud of her and most days, ahem, look up to her. From the quiet, tiny shy girl that she was to the gorgeous, happy, insanely hard working and driven (and goofy) little lady that she has become.
She makes me laugh, she makes me cry. She makes me grit my teeth and makes my heart swell bigger than I ever thought it could.