blue

If there were a color to describe my mood over the past few days, it would be blue.


I have been feeling a bit melancholy of late. It may have something to do with
the birthday of my "baby" this Saturday.


17.


I feel like my life is spinning much too quickly, almost as if it were passing me by.
I feel like a spectator standing on the sidelines. Some days.


Days filled with dentists and homework and orthodontists. Days filled with teens
eating and video games and girls. Days filled with dolly's and cleaning and meetings.
Days filled with carpools and errands and primary. Never-ending.


Days upon days upon days.


I attended the Olympus High School football game this past weekend
and sat with a dear friend and her husband.
She had tears in her eyes as she explained it was "senior night"
and her son (the center on the football team) was playing his last
high school game at home. The parents posed for pictures with their boys,
each mother was given a rose.


She sighed and expressed the same thing I was feeling.
It is going much too, much too, fast.


People had warned me years ago.


How fast it all goes by. In a blur. Did I remember? Had I listened?


Autumn was long in coming to our valley this year. Summer refused to relinquish its
hold. Days filled with summer heat filled the weeks into October. And while people
relished the heat, I longed for the chill of autumn. The haze in the air. The golden hue
to the coloring of the sky. The crunch of leaves and the smell of baking.


The change a new season brings.



Then Monday blew in, and fall had come with a vengeance. Dark thunder heads
hovered over the mountains. A splash of fall color lit up the foothills.
Crisp air blew in my windows. I drew a deep breath in.


I was happy to my very core with the changing of the seasons this year.


Sometimes raising our children is like that. It seemed
like the days filled with spit up and baby fat and sleepless nights
would last forever. Somedays seemed to drag endlessly in tedium.
Days into weeks into months. Into forever.
And then BAM! one day I woke up and it was autumn. Forever had ended.
And my children were long and bony. Tall and skinny.
Where did all the chubby legs go? The warm small bodies that attatched
themselves endlessly to mine. The hours spent on my lap reading. They were
gone and replaced with a new stage of life.


Not one that is perhaps better...


...But just different.


And so I say to myself with a sigh...


You must remember to enjoy the summer filled days. Your children's ever fleeting
moments at home. You must breath in and breath out and take some moments to
just BE. Enjoy the here. The now. For soon, all too soon, it will be gone.


And so, I have been hugging them a little tighter and watching them a little closer.
My glance lingering for a second or two, too long. Trying to find the
still in the spinning as each day goes by.


If only for a moment of each hour of each day.