I write this now as I'm weeping in my bathroom whilst hiding from my children. I can hear them in the living room. They are marveling at the gap in the front of Gages' mouth (my 6 year old) where his 2 front teeth used to reside and passing around the last of his two front milk teeth, examining it and appraising it, in an effort to guess what value the tooth fairy will think it has (they are very generous with their valuations).
This brand of weeping isn't new to me. I've been here many times before. Every time one of my babies lose a tooth. When they began to crawl, then walk, then talk. The fist time they pottied on their own. I weep every time I packed the clothes they have outgrown up, or when I clean out their toy box's. When my eldest daughter questioned the existence Santa Clause after Christmas this past year. I cried every time I passed the baby isle at the grocery store for the first time without any need for the products within it.
Yes I cry... I cry alot about my children growing up. I embrace the beauty of their milestones passing and their blossoming into toddlerhood, the preschool phase, school age, and adolescence. I'm grateful to God for their health and I know we are incredibly blessed. But I'm heartbroken because as they cross each of their developmental thresholds my life is forever changed. I'm reminded at these times that they will not be my babies forever, that the days of their life prior to the milestone are written in a previous chapter, a chapter that cannot be edited or revised. I think about my behavior and my involvement and interaction with them in the completed chapters and I am certain that I didn't take enough photographs. I always feel that I spent too much time in my day to day to stop the clock for a moment longer and savor my babies. I worry I didn't give them enough of me, and that I didn't relish the best of what that particular stage in their life offered, and now it's too late and I can't go back.
Chloe loved her dress up dresses when she was little. We couldn't get her to take them off or even wear clothes underneath them. One day a very disturbing bump appeared on her head behind her ear. We went to the doctor and he advised us this was a lymph node. After a couple of weeks of putting hot compresses on her head to try and get rid of the hard, fixed knot under our pediatricians advisement we were back at his office testing for leukemia. In the several days it took to get the blood results back we were told to continue with the compresses. This was not an easy task for a squirmy and energetic three year old. I would lay in bed with her head on my lap and look at her precious feet dangling off of the side of the bed, poking out from her tattered, yet treasued ballgown and I would pray for her health and vitality Knowing that that vision of her in that dress was forever going to be imprinted on my memory. Chloe did not have leukemia and the knot dissapeared a week or so later. A year later Chloe still wore her princess gowns, although less often. I has cleaned her room and organized everything and could not for the life get her to pick even one toy off of the floor and put it away. Slowly but surely I began grounding her from her toys and putting them in the garage until she could learn to care for them properly. The princess dresses were the last to go. By the time Chloe finally surrendered to picking her things up and putting them away thus earning her previous toys back she had outgrown the desire to be a princess all day, she was uninterested in her dresses and many of her other toys. Time had passed, she had matured, the chapter was closed but I had ended it too early. I thought I was teaching her responsibility but what I was really doing was teaching her to play with other things and robbing myself of the privilege of watching her twirl around in princess gowns for a few moments longer. For this I will never forgive myself.
Parenthood is riddled with these sorts of regrets. I mourn the passing of the seasons of my children's lives but no more than I try to cherish them. Try as I might however I never feel adequate.
Gage will soon have two shiny permanent teeth in the gummy gap in the front of his mouth and I will secretly weep in the bathroom again in mourning of prior oral landscape, but now, now I'm mourning those little baby teeth I loved so much. The baby teeth that brought me to tears when they first emerged and rid him of his toothless smile forever. Oh its going to be a rough road ahead. How does anyone survive this!
