Be Careful What You Wish For

I remember big events, births and birthday parties, growth charts and hospital visits, trips full of photographs. But the times that I meant to remember are gone. The way her face looked when she rode a two-wheeler for the first time. The soft stillness of their warm skin as they slept, one surrounded by thirty-four stuffed animals, the other breathing softly, thumb between six tiny teeth. The expression on my older daughter’s face when she popped a jalapeno pepper into her mouth, thinking it was a piece of chocolate. The seriousness with which my younger child played Peter Pan and fought an invisible Captain Hook with a plastic sword.

I watched my daughters leave for school this morning and felt the tug of wishing, wishing they were little again. The older one, so grown-up now, with curled hair and flared jeans. And my younger child, scooping up her backpack and lunch. There was brief exchange, a kiss on the cheek from one and a wave from another, and they were gone.

There was a time when I heard “Mommy?” at least one hundred times a day. How I’d wished for silence. Now I am the one asking questions, begging, almost, for scraps of information about their day: How was school? What made you laugh? What made you cry? Who is that boy? What is the name of the girl that pushed you on the playground? There was a time when I knew every minute of every hour of every day what was happening in their lives, and it made me tired. How I long to be tired like that again.

My children have become people, new and different people, separate and apart from me. I knew this would happen but I didn’t realize what it would feel like. I am so proud. I am so…what? Melancholy. Curious. I look at these children and don’t know any longer just what is going on inside of them as I did when they nursed at my breast or cried in frustration or needed a diaper changed. Now there’s the daughter who competes in karate and spars against boys when her mom can scarcely throw a punch. There’s the daughter who plays violin and can figure out any computer game, while I can’t carry a tune or find my way around a word processing program. They are in some ways strangers to me now. How strange.

I have had an amazing life. I have grown up with loving parents, studied what I wanted to in college, married a remarkable man. I have run a multimillion dollar business and created an entirely new market segment that I’m proud of, one that exposes little kids to great works of art. I have survived breast cancer with a strength I didn’t know I had. I have made great friends and met fascinating people. And yet the most amazing thing that I have done is to have had children. I know this is something that most women do sometime in their lives, and while it’s something that’s not unique or unusual in any way, I still view it as my most fulfilling life’s work.