Daughters

From autumn

Ah, daughters.
My oldest called me this morning, in tears. Her baby went to kindergarten today.
As I was driving to the studio, I thought about that.
Maybe I told you this before.
I can't remember. Senior moment, maybe.
But I had my three girls about 7 years apart.
So by the time the youngest left home for college, 31 years had elapsed since the first one was born.
That's a lifetime of having kids at home.
I didn't know there was anything else.
And isn't that the way it is, though?
When your children are growing up, your whole life is wrapped around them. What they eat, what they do, how they are, their school, their friends, their sports, their vacations.........they are you. On a daily basis.
I never thought about life without them foremost in my brain. I never even imagined it.
But here it is.
They are all grown up, with families of their own, and they are no longer the focus of my life.
As dearly as I love them, and as crazily as I love the grandchildren they have given me, they have lives SEPARATE from mine.
OMG.

From autumn

Don't get me wrong. I talk to them all the time. I see them a lot. I know (for the most part) what they think, how they feel, what makes them happy.
But it is so different, now that they are responsible for themselves. And I am not.
I know I am rambling here. But it boggles my mind.

I am rumbling around in the fridge for something to eat. My mother is standing in the doorway. She says, "I've got smoked turkey."
I answer, "Mom, I haven't eaten turkey, or meat, in over a year."
"Yeah, but it's smoked," she says.
AY YI YI.
My mother has turned into my child. Only I have way less control over her than I did my own children.
Some place between Ava going to kindergarten, and my 85 year old mother trying to feed me turkey, there's a message.
I just don't have any idea what it is.