It's a Mom Thing (2)

So there's an inevitable thing that happens between parent and child. This quick transformation. When we as mothers are one day an individual, and then suddenly two-in-one. This life takes roughly 9 months to mature inside, to grow and develop, but is still you, it's your blood pumping through their veins. Then one miraculous day, you are two, two separate entities. This is exciting, but admittedly a day of mourning. This slow grief, I imagine never truly ends. A friend mentioned to me, of never feeling so alone. It's so subtle at first: Your baby is so intensely dependent, and truthfully will die without your nurture. But slowly independence takes form, your milk soon is no longer the sustenance it needs, your baby will sit, eventually become mobile without your gentle guidance. And then it really becomes obvious, those slow unsteady steps away from you.

It was this overwhelming feeling that hit me as E and I left the post office last week. We make frequent trips, because it affords us some fresh air and well, it's frankly a lot funner to drop our letters and packages down the shoot as opposed to our mailbox. Anyhow, she turned to me and requested that we take different routs from the front door of the post office to the sidewalk. "You go on the stairs, and I go on the ramp." I obliged her request, and as my eye followed her excited skip, it hit me: "This is how it starts, this, now small gap in our walk through life only will get wider and wider."

I know that my true job as a parent is to provide my precious daughter with the tools to navigate life as an empathetic and successful person in society, not little girl in society. I know she will grow, but it is poetic when you are able to catch glimpses of it right in front of you, or, in front of the post office.