Sweet Spring and Other Thoughts

No matter when it happens, I love Spring.

Growing up, I would have absolutely killed for Spring to show her gentle head in early March. I remember, all too clearly, how hard March is in Maine. I remember wanting...REALLY REALLY wanting the snow piles to blocking everything, for the endless snow glare to quit. I remember being so freakin' frustrated by the constant road spray of dirt and grit (very few people in this world know about my ridiculous obsession with a clean windshield). More than anything, it's just old. The need to SEE something other than snow is huge and winter still has a strong grip.

Spring in the Mid Atlantic is nothing like Spring in the Northeast...partly because winter is not the same. Winter here doesn't happen...at least not in my definition of winter. No snow (or very few "storms"...most of which drop an inch and shut the roads down with some ice). It's not even very cold by cold standards. Sure, there are days...but only days. Not months at a time.

So when Spring comes, it comes in seemingly overnight. You wake up in the morning, as I did yesterday, and hear on the news that the temps will be in the high 60's or low 70's. So, rather than wearing your fleece (if you're me), you wear a sweatshirt...or nothing. Yesterday, walking to the bus stop at 5 PM, my sweatshirt was wrapped around my waist and I was basking in the late afternoon sun and gentle breezes...enjoying 70-degree weather. The beautiful bushes by the Sculpture Garden are starting to bloom (they are evergreen bushes, but in the spring and summer they get large white blossoms that just keep coming...I SO wish I knew what they were...I'd love to plant some). Kelly and I noticed over the weekend that many of the trees in our area are pink already - the blossoms not yet open, but definitely showing. The trees are budding.

It's spring. And even if Spring comes on the heals of a non-winter...I still love it. I love the freshness, the newness, the desire to get out of the house and be outside. I love opening the windows and cleaning and feeling like the winter is being blown away on a warm breeze. I love renewal.

Now, Spring is also a constant reminder that in just a few months it is going to be so flippin' hot in this area that I want to die. But I try to ignore that. Spring is lovely.

I blogged last night in a hurry about Bailey walking. Can you believe that she's walking??? It might be one of the first real moments that I've had where I feel like my baby is making her first steps out of my life. I know that sounds dramatic, but seriously. My boss says all the time that from the moment of birth, parenting is all about letting your children go. That the bulk of the job is loving someone so much that you love them enough to let go.

I think that's true. True in a way that I never would have understood until Bailey came to join us. I was joking with Bailey one night last week - telling her that although she may be her Mommy's favorite girl (she is...LOL), that one day Kelly would kick her out but I'd get to stay. We laugh a lot in our house about Kelly's incredible love for Bailey. Not laugh in a funny way...it's a sweet joking thing. Never in my life have I seen two people love each other the way that Kelly and Bailey do. It is a pure, pure love that has no dingy spots...nothing has tarnished it yet. Because of my early experiences with parenting, I don't have that. Inevitably, Bailey's first few months will always be connected for me to the most difficult person time in my life. Of course, that has nothing to do with Bailey...but I can't remember those months without remembering how deeply depressed I was and how much I struggled. Kelly doesn't have that with Bailey. She remembers my struggle and how it effected her...but her connection to Bailey was and still is pure. Like white light...just the perfect combination of love, adoration and sweetness.

And Bailey loves Kelly the same way. I am much less gentle with Bailey (as I am with most things in life). Of course, Bailey adores me too. But not like she adores her Mommy.

Anyway - what was the point? Oh right...letting go. I wonder at times about how we are going to be as Bailey gets older. Kelly has often joked that Bailey is not allowed to date until she's 18. And she can't have sex until she's 25 (if ever). On the other hand, we are both pretty insistent that once Bailey reaches the end of high school - it's on and out (unless she's got a job, is paying rent or going to college). But I wonder. My love is such a hard ass...until she's not. And with Bailey, she's not.

All these thoughts started because of Bailey walking. Walking is such an adult thing to do. It's what allows us to move forward, move away from, and go in our own direction. It's hard for me to think about Bailey choosing a life that could be far away from us...even though I made that choice. It's hard for me to conceive that a day will come when Bailey doesn't need us to provide her food, her shelter, her connection to the world. I know that I don't have to start thinking about these things yet, but in some ways, I think I have to. At least in the abstract. I feel like I have to envision my life as separate from Bailey's in some ways. Rather than seeing the job of parenting as molding her into something, I feel like I have to look at it as being one of her guides as she makes her way through the world.

That old song - "hold on loosely, but don't let go." Something like that. Because someday, if we do our jobs right, she will leave. She will walk away from us. She will take our hearts, that now live with her, and she will make her way in this world. And that direction, her path, could lead her thousands of miles away. It could take her to places and to experiences that we can't even conceive of. It could mean that we only see her occasionally. And I have to be ready for that. So that when she does go, I'm okay with her leaving. So that I have had years of preparing myself for the heartbreak and the incredible joy at seeing her be her own woman.

And the other side of that coin is that I don't want to define myself as nothing more than Bailey's mother. Because when Bailey doesn't need an active mother anymore...when we are parenting an adult child instead of a kid, who will we be if all we've been for years is her mother? I remind myself all the time that, no matter how huge the job feels, Kelly and I are people outside of parenting. We had a life before Bailey, and we'll have a life after Bailey. So the other side of parenting, I think, is to continue to grow and raise MYSELF. And I think that job is equally as important as the work of raising Bailey.

I'm rambling. I'm thinking a lot today. Seeing her walk struck a cord with me. She's not a helpless baby. She's a child. A girl who will one day be a woman who will one day have a life that is not all about me and Kelly. Perhaps this is the first of many inevitable feelings of loss that I will have as she grows up and out and away. How can I feel so much joy and excitement about something that also makes me feel so sad?