Mewling Transitions

In my little world, fall is a time of reflection.

September arrives in a whirlwind of seasonal change, school, theatre, jobs, and loss of daylight.

My birthday looms precariously as the leaves begin to change.

My dedicated relatives send me little L’Shana Tova emails and I have to pause and re-visit my heritage.

And, heartbreakingly, my child celebrates a birthday.

This has, by far, been the hardest addition to this time of transition. This year, it knocked me over the head, sent me flying and then proceeded to bounce up and down on me for a while.

I spent about three weeks getting teary-eyed at babies, sighing to myself when Avi wasn’t looking, and weirding her out by saying things like “I’m so proud of you being a big girl, but I miss you being a baby.” To which she would smartly reply with a huge grin, “Your baby grew into a big girl.”  And I would swallow the tears and grin in reply and move on.

The fact is, having my baby become a kid was an unexpected slap in the face because unlike most of my married girlfriends with two and three children, this is it for me.

Oh, I know, I’ve “got plenty of time.”   But, for now, this is it.

And that makes me really sad.

I would love to have a house just busting with kids.  But I don’t.  And, right now, it makes me sad and down right jealous to see women and their new babies because I want a new baby (and the dazed dad to go with it, if I’m really being honest).

Blame the genetic code if you want but no matter how you slice it, I want a mewling, puking bundle of squishiness to keep me up at night, latch on to my boob for instant comfort and make all the day-to-day stress completely obsolete with the lift of a tiny soft pinky.

I’m pretty much over the teary-eyed weeks until next year but I still sigh about the rapid growth of my “big girl.”  It doesn’t help when she asks me complicated questions from the backseat like, “Mama, what’s Simple Twist of Fate mean?”  And that she actually seemed to understand my halting reply.