And May You Stay Forever Young

In four hours my baby is turning 10. She’s so tall and smart and funny and beautiful. She’s nothing at all like the child I thought I would have and she’s so much more than I thought she’d be.

It’s gone by so fast and it makes me sad to think that I only have eight more before she’ll leave the nest. I’m asking myself if I hugged her enough and laughed with her enough and did I spend enough time crying with her? Have I been the best mother I could have been or did I waste too much time and miss too many moments?

She talks about boys now and loves to sit on the phone with her girlfriends giggling over clothes and classes and cliques. She dresses herself without asking my opinion most days and offers me advice on my wardrobe. She can brush her own hair all the way down to the back ends even though it’s long and hard to reach and she puts in her own ponytails and barrettes. She wants to wear makeup.

It’s only been a little while since she spent all day curled in my arms sleeping peacefully to just the sound of my heartbeat. Just days ago she toddled her first steps toward me with a mostly gummy grin. It was only yesterday that she learned to use the potty all by herself and mere hours since she started her first day of school.

She has her own cell phone now and is begging to be allowed to stay home by herself and I worry that she’s growing up too fast. Then she comes into my room to crawl in bed with me in the middle of the night because she had a nightmare. She’s half child and half teenager, stuck in the middle and fighting a tug-of-war between wanting to grow up and the desire to stay my baby forever. It’s a battle that I know I won’t win but I’m still pulling as hard as I can because I’m just not ready to let go yet.

My baby is turning 10 in less than four hours now. The big double digit birthday. Tonight I’ll wake her up at 12:36, the exact moment she came into this world, and I’ll eat a piece of cake with her curled up in on her bed in the dark and tell her the story about the night she was born. Tomorrow we’ll celebrate with McDonald’s and this weekend she’ll have a sleepover with her friends.

Tomorrow night after she’s gone to sleep I will celebrate myself. I will pour myself a glass of wine and reminisce about the last decade while celebrating my tenth anniversary in the most time-honored profession known to man. And I will cry because my little angel is one more year closer to spreading her wings and soaring.