a couple of seven-year-olds

It’s usually at night when I am most aware of it.

Lying between London and Mosely in their single loft bed.

Listening to them recount their days.

Answering the same series of questions London asks every evening about the next day.

“What’s for breakfast?  What’s for lunch?  What’s for dinner?  What are we doing all day? How many hours until morning will be here?”

It’s during this nightly ritual that I notice all the details I have been too busy to see all day.

The way these two girls really know one another.

The way Mosely’s two new front teeth are inching their way fully into her wide little smile.

The way they refuse to even entertain the idea of having separate beds.

“We don’t like sleeping alone,” they remind me when I suggest an extra bed for more sleeping space.

One recent evening I crept back into their room after the goodnight hugs and kisses had been delivered.

I climbed silently up their ladder.

My head popped just barely over the ledge.

These two girls,

my two seven-year-old daughters,

were playing cards by the glow of the nightlight.

Slaps.

A game Riley taught them last summer.

London offering Mosely advice and, when Mosely’s deck runs out, just passing her a stack of her own deck so the game doesn’t have to end.

I just stared at my girls.

Barely able to comprehend that seven years had somehow passed since London was a little burrito wrapped tightly in swaddling flannel blankets, unable to even wiggle her own thin fingers.

Impossible to understand how Mosely had morphed from a blanket-toting toddler who pronounced swimsuit as “thip-thoot”.

Yet there they were.

My two girls.

Best friends.

Honestly,

I feel as if their growing up is happening somehow in direction correlation to those two permanent front teeth proceeding through their upper gums.

With that simple change of appearance, it seems as if everything changes.

Gone are the tiny adorable faces of a baby, a toddler, a preschooler.

Those sweet faces are replaced with self-assurance, a little know-it-all-ness, freckles, mischief and awkward school photos.

London no longer likes to hold my hand in public.

Mosely groans and sighs when I laugh at her dramatic proclamations.

I’m not mothering two babies here.

I’ve got two little girls.

Two small humans

who are funny and smart and mostly kind.

And it’s my job

to nurture and guide

to listen and praise

to encourage and correct

these young people

who share my last name.

Like so many aspects of mothering,

it’s a bittersweet burden.