Just enough time has passed, since they came home from college for the holidays, to allow me to feel like this is the normal state of our family. It feels "normal" that they live at home, that I go to sleep worrying about them because they are out at night and that I plan my meals and activities around them. But all that will change over the next week or so. They will leave again. The house will empty of their energy. Their absence will leave a void until I adjust, once again, to the new "normal" state of our family.
One year is ending and another will soon begin. The years are rolling into each other at a faster pace these days. It is time to reflect on the past and time to imagine the future. I look through my photo albums, no longer the ones of old that filled books upon books, but now, instead, they fill my computer's memory. Through the photos I watch as they grew. I can see the changes now . . . that I couldn't see then. What will come in the future? Will they marry and have families of their own? How much a part of them will I be? Will we live near or far? Will their spouses find me an imposition? As individual branches of our family, they will disperse and grow in different directions. They will, inevitably, spread and grow apart.
But this morning, they are together under one roof, safe and asleep in their beds. They may stand on the brink of their lives, filled with the excitement of what might be, and I too, stand ready to become the author I have always dreamed of being, but for this moment . . . they are mine once again . . .
It is such a heartfelt post, a remonstrance of sorts, on a fate that a lot of us are bound to meet with.Oh yes, I know that feeling of wanting the time to stop. Beautiful post.
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