(no subject)
I'm feeling pensive tonight.
My fifth child just turned 17. Wow. There's something to that saying that time telescopes as we get older. Honestly, it's a bittersweet thing, watching them get older...so darn fast. At first it seems like you have all the time in the world with your babies. Then if you have them stair-step like I did, you can get lost in the whole child-rearing shtick. It was beautiful and rollicking and so much fun. We were broke so often (um...that much hasn't quite changed) but we had so much to do. There were chickens, ducks, geese to raise. There were goats, rabbits. There were garden and orchard to tend. I did some writing as they got older and decided that I couldn't sell myself the way a freelancer has to - so I wrote mostly for home ed publications. Free magazines and a little cash were good. Life was pretty sweet, if hectic.
Then you watch one grow to teen years and then another. One gets married, another goes to college. Pretty soon I'm sitting here, having somehow finished that thesis in a field I didn't start out in, exactly, but kind of fell into by a fortuitous set of circumstances. And that's not to say I didn't grab on tight with both hands when I saw the opportunity. I guess I made the decision one day when I was someones shovelbum and I held a tiny bone in my hand, partially burned, from pretty far down in the hole. A gentle wind was blowing down the mountainside to my south and and a raven flapped overhead. It really hit me that moment that I could probably spend the next half of my life working in and around all of this stuff. Seems like a pretty good deal, after all. I get to go outside and dig, I get to come into a classroom and teach, I get to play with bones and such in a lab. And I still get to mess around with plants. I can't complain too much.
But K just turned 17. Little sweetness plus feistyness is now a young woman. I keep realizing how much I love my kids. How I would want to hang out with them if they weren't my own kids. How fast life goes by. How fortunate I am in so many ways. I still can't believe she's 17. She's beautiful and has so much inner beauty too. Such strength of character. I love you, K, if you're reading this. Happy Birthday.
My fifth child just turned 17. Wow. There's something to that saying that time telescopes as we get older. Honestly, it's a bittersweet thing, watching them get older...so darn fast. At first it seems like you have all the time in the world with your babies. Then if you have them stair-step like I did, you can get lost in the whole child-rearing shtick. It was beautiful and rollicking and so much fun. We were broke so often (um...that much hasn't quite changed) but we had so much to do. There were chickens, ducks, geese to raise. There were goats, rabbits. There were garden and orchard to tend. I did some writing as they got older and decided that I couldn't sell myself the way a freelancer has to - so I wrote mostly for home ed publications. Free magazines and a little cash were good. Life was pretty sweet, if hectic.
Then you watch one grow to teen years and then another. One gets married, another goes to college. Pretty soon I'm sitting here, having somehow finished that thesis in a field I didn't start out in, exactly, but kind of fell into by a fortuitous set of circumstances. And that's not to say I didn't grab on tight with both hands when I saw the opportunity. I guess I made the decision one day when I was someones shovelbum and I held a tiny bone in my hand, partially burned, from pretty far down in the hole. A gentle wind was blowing down the mountainside to my south and and a raven flapped overhead. It really hit me that moment that I could probably spend the next half of my life working in and around all of this stuff. Seems like a pretty good deal, after all. I get to go outside and dig, I get to come into a classroom and teach, I get to play with bones and such in a lab. And I still get to mess around with plants. I can't complain too much.
But K just turned 17. Little sweetness plus feistyness is now a young woman. I keep realizing how much I love my kids. How I would want to hang out with them if they weren't my own kids. How fast life goes by. How fortunate I am in so many ways. I still can't believe she's 17. She's beautiful and has so much inner beauty too. Such strength of character. I love you, K, if you're reading this. Happy Birthday.