this is the age

One day last weekend was just so lovely.

Loads of creativity purring through the house.

London and I creating sewing kits.  Berg drawing blue birds because he wanted to.  Mosely and Piper pretending the cardboard boxes I should have been packing were canoes and they were going over a waterfall like a character in a book we love.   I was working on several projects at once.   Kevin was teaching himself a new song by the Decemberists on his guitar  – which he can play by ear.  (Which leaves me more than slightly envious.)  After my attempts at making shampoo and conditioner,  I was able to take a rare late day shower.

As I was working on the floor in our bedroom on an art project, various children would happily flit in and out of the bedroom, offering to help construct a felt flower or to watch me staple or to show me their current drawing or just to be near.

And I realized

with a suddenness that made my chest tighten

with a clarity that made me put down the staple gun and walk over to the computer so I wouldn’t forget these thoughts

that these are the moments.

This is the age.

These are the years

that I know I will miss most acutely.

I already know that seeing photos of my children at their current ages will stab my heart right through to the back of my body.

Piercing and stinging in its bittersweet bevy.

I know I will miss my infants.

I already do.

Their smell and their unreal softness.

But these years – the independent, but not yet breaking away years – the six to eight years old.

Where our kids don’t come to us for merely permission to do the next thing

They don’t need a diaper change and they have a memory that lasts beyond two weeks.

These years.

The days when my child approaches me not because they need me but because they just like me.

Because they want to see what I’m doing and they want to join in.

These sweet sweet days that we are that semi-perfect balance between friends and something else.

These are the numbers I will miss.

I know I will ache for these years if I am blessed with old age and fading sight and shifting hearing.

These are the moments that are so enchanting I can hardly stand it.

I can hardly hold on tightly enough or loose enough or whatever enough.

This is the age.

And I know it.

Golden hazy light set in a sepia tone filters the images of Right Now through my brain set to some song like Iz’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

That’s what this age is like.