The things we miss ~ January 28th, 2014

As I laid next to Nora taking a nap with her yesterday, the same thought passed through me that I've had lately during similar moments, "Is this the last time I'll get to nap with her like this?" Part of me knows that we'll always have chances to cuddle, and that she's a very affectionate kid no matter what, but I can't help feeling like I'm nearing the end of a really good book all the time lately. As much as I don't want to finish the chapter I'm drawn towards the end out of curiosity and inevitability. It's no longer just the two of us during the day and it's no longer the three of us in our home. It's the four of us soon enough and there's no going back to the beginning of the story without reflecting on the knowledge of the present.

As excited as we are, part of me sees how there will be a grieving period for her, and us, over the old dynamic. Just like there was for Jamie and I over the loss of just the two of us. We felt guilty admitting it to each other at first but now we discuss it and can commiserate about the heartbreak and the humor of parenting. Life is full of birth and death but no one warns you that being a grown up is all about experiencing it in different scales of change repeatedly. We grieve the ending of a phase just as we celebrate the beginning of the next and both are equally important and relevant yet the grieving is suppose to be silent. That's one of many realities of being a parent, and an adult, that really sucks. The pressure within and around us to suffer in silence when there's no need to do so and to turn that into a morass of guilt that hangs on us. I'm weird, I'd rather talk about it and acknowledge it then pretend it's not there. Forced ambiguity pisses me off. It's like most packaging, wasteful and pointless.

The three of us will now be the four of us just like our singlehood ended when we married, our twosome ended when we became parents, and our childhoods ended when we became parents. You can be an adult without being a parent but there's a definite finality about being a kid when someone else is depending on you to be the adult. We would need to set aside time just for Nora from now on and that will no longer be the default. There will be another set of hands clamoring for ours, if he listens and we're lucky, and another little body trying to squirm into our bed at night. Our love will change, stretch, and include him just like our hearts did for each other, our marriage, Nora, and I had to for Jamie's cats.