Life, for an eight year old, can be very complicated. One minute she has a boy chasing her around, the next she is punching him in the face because he's being mean to her friends and on Friday she came home with a bruise on her cheek because this boy kicked her in the face at recess. It reminds me a lot of my school yard days...
She is growing up so fast and her sister is right behind her with a birthday coming up in six days.
I just have no idea where the time goes anymore...
One minute they are sleeping next to you in bed, skin smelling sweet like powder, their breath like milk. Any small cry wakes you from sleep and you know that it is time to walk the floors with them and comfort them until they sleep once more. Now it is all I can do to get them to sit much less lay down with me, content to listen to the beat of my heart.
Perhaps it is just one of those days where you realize that time is slipping away from you and you wonder if you have remembered to be grateful for it all. Have you remembered to teach them all you can? To let them be the people they are and not the people you expect them to be? Have you listened to their imaginations? Have you nurtured their self confidence? It seems that there are not enough hours in the day to accomplish it all and as these years fly by you stop occasionally to marvel at the human being you have created.
When I was eight years old my parents had been divorced a year and I had been uprooted and taken from one of the southern states to one of the northernmost states away from my father and brothers. I fought with anyone who came near and was angry in general at the world. I was cooking most of my own food by then, and I never had a baby sitter. I rode the metropolitan bus lines and would wander around Madison by foot on my own. Imagine a blond haired, blue-eyed child... thrift store clothes and sneakers torn at the soles from summers past. I had a southern accent I was desperately trying to shake and burdens that an eight year old should never carry. I fought very bravely and lost as many scuffles as I won. And I wonder...
Am I different now? Am I better?
I am still fighting fights, only these with my mind. I am still wearing out my shoes from play only now it is climbing rocks and chasing my kids. I still feel the weight of burden, but there isn't a way to shake it anymore. I know that one thing has never changed though; when I love, I love fiercely...when I fight, I fight bravely... when I smile, I mean it with every part of me.
My daughters make me smile.
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