When I was a teen, my mom would take my sisters and me to visit my grandmother (mom's mom) in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where she lived. We'd go for 3 or 4 days, and one of the evenings would be spent on the boardwalk, eating ice cream, saltwater taffy, and French fries, buying t-shirts, and riding the rides in the arcade/amusement area.
I remember one year we all climbed on to a spinning ride that went really fast forward and sideways and then stopped to go the same way backwards. I rode in the same car as my mom, and, to my mortification, she made the controller stop the ride so she could get off...which meant I got off, too. I was totally ungracious to her and remained embarrassed and a bit miffed that she couldn't stay on for a few more minutes for most of the rest of the evening.
It wasn't until years later that I rode on a ride (one I'd ridden many many times before) and suddenly understood the feeling of sheer panic that can run through you without any warning. It's nonsensical to those who don't understand. There's no rhyme or reason for it, but it takes over and consumes your reasoning until you have to change where you are or what you're doing to even get a tiny handle on sanity again.
I blame it on hormones.
Funny, right? Not really. Not even slightly. It can be internally terrifying until you ground yourself again.
Fast forward to my own motherhood. I have often complained lamented mentioned in other posts on here that I feel like I'm barely hanging on to this ride called "Life" that sweeps the kids away into adulthood. I often occasionally wish that it would slow down (or even pause) to let me catch my breath. It's an odd sensation, not unlike my poor mom wanting to get off the ride that was terrifying her, making her feel dizzy.
I am dizzy.
I don't know if it's because the beginning of a child's life seems painfully slow that the race to the adulthood seems to speed up exponentially.
There's a saying many older parents use: The days are long, but the years are short.
So how is it that we are a less than three weeks away from graduating our youngest child...and our last homeschool student? How have we managed to finish this chapter so fast? Was it fast? Or is my perspective just skewed by living nearly 55 years of life? I don't remember the years flying by when I was a teenager. In fact, most of the time, they seemed to drag by with all of us anticipating the next phase with the common impatience of youth.
Stuart asked me the other day: "What's next for you?"
It was a hard question to answer...and one that was met with a lot of emotions.
What IS next?
It's not something I really considered. I've been a stay-at-home mom for so long now, I don't really know how to redefine myself yet.
I guess I wish the wasn't "the end" of our homeschool journey, not because I want to hold back our son...but because I have so much more I want to learn with him.
The days are long, but not long enough, and the years are most certainly too short.
Sigh.
