6th...

​She kissed me goodbye as she has every morning on her way out the door for the past nine months and I reminded her to have a great (last) day.  I thought of the mid-August morning when we stood side-by-side on our front steps for the obligatory “first day of school” photo and remembered the nerves we shared – while for different reasons, they were shared all the same – and knew that in a few short hours she would return as a seventh grader…just like that.  I didn’t take a photo.  Maybe I should have, but I didn’t.  As with every year before, sixth grade has flown by with an urgency I find myself straining to contend with.  She’s 12 now.  My size.  She walks out of my room with my clothes on and I’ve almost gotten used to it.  She told her cousin on Saturday that the only hand she likes to hold is mine.  Mine.  For now, anyway.  I will take it.  And cherish it…knowing I have little time left before that simple pleasure is no longer mine and my heart will swell with something less than joy when I see the other hands she chooses to hold.  I watched her walk up the sidewalk this morning for one last time as a sixth grader and remembered the first few times I watched her walk up the same sidewalk last fall; with a catch in my chest if I’m being completely honest.  She is older…maybe a bit taller…more mature…more sure of herself in that great big building…confident in the ways that count…yet, sitting precariously close to the edge of childhood – the place we parents find ourselves struggling with almost as much as, if not more than, our children do.  We talk of boys and girl drama, of making good choices and acting with respect and character, of expectations and dreams, of all the things she is still trying to hold onto while reaching ever farther towards those she is almost ready to grasp.  And sometimes I can’t help but think back over these past 12 years with a mix of sadness at the ridiculous ways time slips from us when we are busy living.  I fear missing something…I’ve always done that.  And now more than ever, I fear not being there for her in the ways she needs me to be.  I know we, as parents, fail our children almost routinely.  As a friend said today, “I never tell another parent how to parent.  We are all just surviving.” So. Very. True.  There are moments of pride and moments of terror.  Moments that swoop through, catching us so off guard that we have no idea which end is up.  And moments that humble us with one single word.  From birth, they can level us emotionally, and I’m fairly certain her ability to do this will only increase over the next few years.  But, thankfully, our capacity to love them is greater than all of those things – and the pain we endure at their unknowing hands – combined.  I see little- bitty her in my-size her…her three-year-old expressions crossing a twelve-year-old face.  The face I see now has braces and touches of make-up on top of the same excited smile and big blue eyes I’ve spent hours memorizing over the past 12 years.  She still looks to me for reassurance, but sometimes with embarrassment and eye rolls.  What we share now are moments much different than in years past…talking her through the awfulness of first-time tampon use, giddy bedtime conversations about a new boy, frustrations over assignments, calming nerves before presentations.  I often say that before I was just keeping her alive, but now I could really mess her up.  I know that with every decision something is solidified or destroyed in her mind, heart, or soul.  I know she is still very immature in the simplest of ways, and I pray daily to preserve those things as long as possible.  The moments are flying by.  There never seems to be enough time to say everything, yet as I look back, I realize how much time we waste.  I beg time to stop more often than I wish it to move.  The days that drug by when she was little seem to laugh in my face now that she’s older.  For the first time ever, I thought about what comes after…after she graduates…in six short years (I say short because the last six have flown by with increased speed so I’m fairly sure the next six may truly be a blur) it will be just me and I honestly don’t know how to feel about that.  So, we’re gonna just set that thought up high on a shelf for a while until I have to pull it down and do something with it.  But today…she left a sixth grader and returned a seventh grader.  Just like that.