Open Windows and Random Tides

There’s a small window about to open. As a family we’ve been talking about this “event” for a couple years, anticipating it like one might have anticipated the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens…though ours has a predetermined date attached to it. At the end of May our youngest daughter will turn 13, becoming an official teenager. The window opens. Three months later, at the end of August, the window will close when our oldest son turns 20. For a season, a brief one, we will have four teenagers in our family.

While this event has occurred in other families before us, thus not making it newsworthy elsewhere, it is a significant moment for us. And though my kids might see this approaching season as a great chance to celebrate something unique that will never happen again for us, for this mom, I find myself dreading the beginning of the end. Not the end of life, but the end of childhood life. Gradually, each of our four will pass from childhood to adulthood. Teen-hood seems to pick up our babies and escort them through this passage, delivering them at the end to the world of adult attitudes and responsibilities.

Officially, legally, my son became an adult when that 18^th birthday arrived over a year ago. And some might argue that he is henceforth an adult in every regard and should have gotten off the Childhood Express right then and there. Though I am excited for him to arrive at that wonderful destination eventually, I’m also glad there is a period of a couple of “teenage years” at the beginning of adulthood.

Like the tide coming in and going out, we become aware of its intentions but see that it takes quite some time to achieve its goal. And sometimes, after several steady waves that show the tide is on its way out, one “out of sync” wave will wash up on the shore much higher than the outgoing pattern of the others, both surprising us and reminding us of the ocean’s right to be random in its steady approach towards its goal. If we’ve been around the ocean much at all, we know that occasional “out of place” wave is not an indication of a tide that is failing, but rather a normal occurrence in an organic system: systematic and yet not totally uniform.

As my son moves out, I’m glad that it is gradual, that his teen life disappears and then reappears again and again as he gently shifts to that goal of “adulthood”. Occasionally an exceptionally “childlike” wave will wash on our shores, and will startle us as we were getting adjusted to him being less and less a child. It races up and surrounds our ankles. Oh, the thrill to be once more, if only briefly, surrounded by his sweet youthfulness (even if sometimes it is the somewhat sour side of childhood immaturity). He is letting go, but it is a process – a process each of us has gone through.

Though "twenty" officially marks the end of my son’s teen life, and a window closes in our family, we know we may see that window re-open slightly, unofficially, to let in a few random waves. We won’t be fooled. We know which direction the tide is going and we’ll just rejoice in the pleasure of watching as it gradually moves out.

Are We There Yet?

Parenting young children, has kept me plenty busy. From the hardest job I’ve ever had (aka potty training), to trips to emergency rooms, assisting in building something amazing out of Lego, reading favorite story books, the many nights of trying to figure out homework assignments that I only vaguely remember studying at some point in my youth…to praying with them for friends, listening to them vent their teenage emotions, to starting the college application process… It has been full, and rich! Would not trade this in for all the adult-only resort vacation spots in the world!

Over time, however, I begin to see out on the horizon something else approaching my life. Or more accurately, I am approaching it. Parenting is not a stagnate state of being. My kids have not stayed two or six or even sixteen years old. Their needs and interests and relationships with me have continued to change, sometimes faster than I can keep up with. Just when you think you have it all figured out and can sort of relax, they bump up to a new stage! And we all have to shift a bit and there’s a new learning curve to conquer in parenting them well. I have never been bored in all these years.

Yet, as the first one begins to take those concrete steps out of his childhood home, that hazy thought way out there on the horizon, the one that so many older women have spoke of, both with a sense of warning and a sense of hope, about the “after life” (life after the kids all leave the nest), suddenly seems so much nearer and clearer. Like a mountain that once only appeared to be a slight, bluish mound way off in the distance, after traveling for quite some time in these parenting years, the time when my children’s daily lives no longer occupy my daily life is now so much nearer and showing itself to be more than just a mirage.

Am I ready? I’m not sure. But I do know that it is not an exact line between “this life” and that one. There is a gradual climb and long before I actually am there completely I am already sensing change on the inside. Not necessarily with excitement, but also not necessarily with dread. There are times when I so envy the young mom with her toddlers. How I miss the days (at times!) of plopping down on the floor to assist the creation of a great toddler architectural feat or sitting on the couch to read again “Frog and Toad” adventures to a rapt audience or being held onto by a sleepy one who has made my shoulder her pillow.

But I also see other women stepping forward, developing abilities that perhaps lay dormant in them for years while they functioned as “mommy”. There is something very exciting about the thought of getting to unearth and polish abilities in my own life. With my kids all the way past those toddler and early years, all moving into or out of the teenage years, not needing me to tie their shoes, all capable of reading on their own, should I make my move now?

Traveling towards that destination that so many women have traveled before me, from the back seat of my mind comes the question, “Are we there yet?” If the journey is part of the destination, then the answer is “Yes.”

And so these Mere Musings are offered as one woman’s pondered observations and meditations along the way.