I’ve long said that time has no meaning, but today? Hoooooboy. Time is truly bereft of worth this fine day.
Why is this?
Because today, the wee babe who made me the mom I am today, the lil kid who kept me on my toes, the young adult working on launching into the world…that person is 25 today.
I am far too young to have a 25-year-old child. I say this because I am all of 17 years upon this earth, a delicate flower of innocence and charm, far too lovely to have a full grown-ass adult as offspring. Say it isn’t so!
But ’tis so. I may have the inner child of a 12-year-old boy, the humor of a frat boy named Chad, and the misplaced belief that I’m as young as I wanna be, but the calendar don’t lie. Neither do my joints. Also learned this morning that I’ve been besties with a high school friend for 38 years; I thought he was lying at first. Dammit.
It’s a strange thing, to get to this point of parenting. They need you, but not really; for one kid we’re the boomerang house while the other needs long-distance advice and support. Free of the never ending radar alerts of early parenting, but not really; the Mom Radar is quieter, fewer pings but much louder when they ring out. It’s strange and it’s lovely and after 25 years, disconcerting.
Letting go, especially when you’ve raised some seriously complex kids, is more emotionally confusing than I expected. Of course, parenting this crew is entirely more everything than I expected, so it’s ironic that this has caught me by surprise.
But TWENTY-FIVE? The preschooler who was a main topic of posts here, back when I started this blog…twenty years ago. TWENTY. YEARS. AGO.
So time has caught me by surprise. It’s grabbed me by the neck and shaken me over the Pit of WTAF for ages now.
Today is my eldest’s 25th birthday.
I’ve been a mom for twenty-five years.
Happy birthday, sweetie. I love you so much.