Seeing our kids go through their own transitions certainly affects ours. As parents bid good-bye to their children who have suddenly become college freshman and off on their own, this transition is especially difficult. I still remember the morning my daughter came down the stairs on the day we were to fly clear across the country from Texas to California to get her settled into her new college.
I still remember thinking this is the last morning of my daughter being home with us as our child in this way. This is the last time she will be my little girl before she goes off on her own, being her own person, living her own life. It was so abrupt it seemed, that I could not comprehend it.
The times of our lives go by so fast. One minute we are changing diapers as sleep-deprived moms of newborns, then we are the taxi drivers for all our kids’ activities, then we hold our breath and say a prayer as they drive off solo with their new driver’s license. We race through life so fast trying to keep up that we can only capture it in pictures or videos, or in my favorite way, in the 60 diaries I have stuffed in a box in my closet.
I still remember our cross-country flight. My daughter slept on my lap as I stroked her hair and gazed down at the mountains and terrain below. I remember thinking that this would be the last time I would stroke her hair like this, the last time she would sleep on my lap.
With my second daughter, Ashley, I remember starring at her new little body through the maternity ward nursery, thinking this would be the last time I would give birth to another precious child and I wanted to savor every minute with her. I mentally tried to capture her sweet voice, and even recorded her and my other daughter on my old tape recorder.
With Ashley, I remember how her newborn frog legs kept getting longer and then she learned to walk one Christmas. I have a cute video of her toddling to Raffi’s song, “Old Toy Trains.”
It seemed that no matter how hard I tried to grasp each moment of my daughters’ lives, time just didn’t “march on,” it flew by so fast I wasn’t even aware of it. Then, one day, they were all grown up with children of their own. How could this happen I often wonder, when I still feel so young inside.
But the good news is that time gives us a little more time to savor more “firsts.” And this is the most precious gift of all.
Anne Mount is an award-winning journalist, author, and screenwriter. She is a native Daytonian.
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