today. (teens are wonderful wonderful too – PSA)

I know I’ve written a LOT about my feelings this year – about graduation and kids growing up and oh whatever floated across my mind.

(This may not be called “My Space” but it sure as heck IS my space.)

I stand by all these feelings. They are true and they are mine and I have felt them all.

(And I still do and I still will. Parenting and motherhood AND LIFE are just all bubbling over with feelings. It’s what makes us HUMAN. Sitting in my living room yesterday with friends and co-workers (how lucky that they are both?) we watched our teenagers drive off in one car together and we talked about how we have to actively suppress fear all day long about cars and drivers and accidents and the unknown. That s is real and it is heavy.)

But today I feel like writing about JOY.

Overwhelming, sustaining, exuberant joy.

Because it’s real too.

It’s been a busy summer. More Kids in All Directions than ever before. This week there’s aviation camp and church camp in North Carolina and there’s work for two of my kids – jobs they enjoy and find fulfilling and interesting. There’s babysitting jobs for one and sleepovers. A trip to a children’s museum with the little grandbabies who ooze adorableness with each sentence.

We’ve had a really difficult time managing to eat dinner at the table at nights all together.

That’s the season we’re in.

But with all those shifting schedules and swapped routines, there has been an enormous amount of one on one and mom and two kids time. And that is golden too. Just golden and sunshiny and sweet.

Last night London and I had dinner together – just she and I – and we called it The 18 Talk.

It was a conversation about what being a grown up looks like at home. About what bills are now hers to pay. About how she’s going to choose her time and invest her talents and carry her own heart to places she’s never been. About the involvement I will have (or not have) in her decisions.

We officially removed her name from the weekly chore chart rotation. (Much to the dismay of her siblings who now have some of those tasks divided up on their rotations.) Instead we planned what being more of a “roommate” looks like and what tasks and help come along with that freedom and role.

The conversation was light hearted. It switched topics rapidly. It included talk about dreams – big and little. Hopes of travel. Giant goals and giant fears. There was laughter and story telling and enthusiasm.

You guys. I didn’t cry then but I might right now. (You know – all this word typing and feeling processing.) But I sat there last night in kind of an awe.

And I told London about that awe.

“Look at us,” I said. Smiling at her beautiful and creative self across the table, “We made it!” We finished high school without hating one another. We made it to this delightful and complicated stage without door slamming and weeks of silent treatment. (Not everyone gets that. I won’t necessarily get this again.) Homeschool for her is completed and we like one another’s company. We can discuss topics without threats and harsh words.

(This is not elevating my parenting. This is one hundred billion percent singing the praises of God and his graciousness in this area.)

As moms, our jobs are transitory in many ways. We are working to not be needed – not in the same way. As educators, there is an end to our game. There are only so many years that students sit in our classrooms.

Driving Bergen home from aviation camp last night I listened to his really cool day. The guy FLEW A PLANE.

Last night, due to sleepovers and camp, I just had three big kids at home. We watched shows for big kids and I looked around at these people and I felt ridiculous in my overwhelming love and affection for their faces and their lives and their entire superb beings.

How shockingly lucky I am to know them. To sit in the half light of a silly TV show and laugh with them.

I get to call them mine and that is incredible.

I miss the babies and the toddlers and the elementary kids that they were – dreamy and energetic and making towns in our woods.

But my word – I love them now too.

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