growing

I woke up this morning to the sounds of my husband and children in the kitchen. I checked the clock, and though it was already seven I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow, relishing a quiet moment of observing my family unobserved. I love to listen to them. I love the sound of them getting along just fine without me. 

Of course, as I made my way to the kitchen a few minutes later, hearing Gabriel joyfully announce my presence with an excited Didi! Mama's coming downstairs! was also rather nice. 

There was no school today and we had minimal plans. So in the morning, after a long pajama-clad putter involving a few rounds of Uno and a desultory attempt at Memory, I packed us a picnic and we went for a hike. 

It was a beautiful morning. The kids brought their favorite birding guide, admired raccoon prints in the mud near the water, and pondered the wisdom of trail blazes. Once their attention was drawn to the red marks on the trees, they were compelled to imagine different and better systems of orienteering. Could you perhaps dig holes in the ground, and put big painted rocks in them? Or make flags and stick them along the trail? Or plant a special vine that only grew along the trail? Mama, wouldn't that be better than painting a tree? 

(Why is reinventing the wheel so tantalizing? And is the affliction worse for us Americans?)

I kept realizing how extraordinary it is to have big kids. It didn't even occur to me that anyone would run out of steam and melt down on the trail (which would have been likely a mere year ago). The whining was negligible, and our conversation ranged all over the place. And here I am, marveling at these independent hiking partners, with an avocado-sized little baby growing inside me, a person we have talked about and dreamed of for years, who is already drawing me back to another way of being a mother just as I am being delightfully tugged into big-kid-dom.

I remember the deep sadness that struck me at the end of my first pregnancy, as I mourned the impending loss of being just us. Mike and I would never be just us again. And then when I was pregnant with Gabriel, I cried on more than one occasion, worrying over the attention that Frances would necessarily forgo, the imbalance we were introducing to our happy trio. I confided those conflicted feelings to wise friends during both those times, and was reassured in a deep and lasting way by their strikingly similar advice: yes it will all change, and no you will not for a moment regret it.

I overheard Mike explaining why we decided to have another child to a friend of ours over the summer. He said we had more love to give. Yes! That is the truth. But already I am realizing I will have to lose the family we are in order to become the family we will be. I have to walk through that door, and feel the sadness that comes with changing. There's no way around it.

But it is all tempered by experience with these beloved, zany kiddos. The world will change, and I will not for a moment regret it.