Happy September! I’ve missed you, friends! (And, to be honest, I’ve missed me-as-blogger. Which makes this summer’s experiment a success!)
There’s so much- and so many feelings- to catch you up on. Let’s start with:
Oh, September.
First days of school make me maudlin. Not because I get all “where did my babies goooo” (which I sometimes do), but because it reminds me of all of the moments that have blown by and all of the moments that’ll blow by soon and I get sad for having been sad in the past- which I know won’t hold a candle to the sad I’ll feel in the future. (The quick n’ close future, if the past sads have been an indication.)
Said it before: Parenting is irraaaaaational.
I know it’s not my job to sit on the floor with them forever, playing blocks and listening to gentle music and being super-duper grateful that I don’t have to go outside for pesky things like school pickup. (I know it’s not, I know it’s not.) That’s not the point of parenthood. If it were, it’d be a fairly limited job in terms of years served.
I get to help them become people. They get to become people.
And if I were- somehow- to raise children whose lifetime aspirations began and ended with just, you know, sorta chilling with me in the backyard forever and ever Amen, then I would’ve failed. That’s not my job. That’s not their job.
Susannah can’t become “the kind of scientist who blows things up” (<—her words, sigh) if she stays inside the blanket tent indefinitely.
No matter how lovely the blanket tent is.
(And it is really is.)
The other morning…
We dropped the girls off for their first days of 1st and 3rd grade. THIRD! I remember third! Every last thing about third! And if I’m now…slightly older than thirty…then Nora will be slightly older than thirty in a split second, too.
And I bet she won’t need me to flip her hair up onto her cool pillow before bed each night when she’s slightly older than thirty. (I’d do it, but she probably won’t need me to.)
There’s a Little Golden Book that my Mom used to read to me called Ned’s Number Book. Tiny city kid Ned spends his days with his mother doing things like counting plums at the market and sliding down three slides at the park. (Three! What kind of incredible urban park has three slides?) Anyway, I loved that book and its beautiful depiction of childhood’s simplicity. I still love it. (I still read it.)
But when did I stop doing the kind of beautifully quiet things that you can only do with the very teensy tiny? When did I stop paying attention?
And, most importantly, when did I become Ned’s mother?
The last day of summer!
Jasper and I celebrated his last day of summer before pre-k (pre-k!!) by strolling through one of our favorite nature preserves, which is also a very “September” thing to do. He was my sole focus that morning- probably a little too aggressively, since the thoughts of the last few paragraphs had recently begun to grab me with a velociraptor’s grip on the ol’ heart- and I watched him running up the path ahead of me. Long, long little boy legs moving a body which hadn’t yet caught up from the latest growth spurt. A giggle that was definitely still Small Kid. And, as he turned the corner, a stark view of the (admittedly lovely) cemetery just beyond the nature preserve’s gates.
Talk about a real ‘sunrise, sunset’ moment. Ow.
(Why am I allowed to be out and about in society, why.)
So.
Yesterday I took myself to the Art Institute of Chicago. All by myself! I’ve been taking babies and friends and parents and future husbands there for almost two decades, but yesterday marked the very first time I had ever gone there solo. Once I got over the sheer strangeness of not asking anyone if they had to pee, it was…nice. Wonderful, actually.
I floated, admired, and read my way through an exhibit I’ve been jonesing to see for months now. (Side note: If you have a chance to see the John Singer Sargent exhibit before it leaves Chicago, really do. The textures, the colors, the weighty gazes of the portraiture subjects…) I also had a beet salad on the sunny Café terrace and read part of a book and enjoyed a cup of coffee in the member lounge and even waved hi to the glowy Chagall windows on my way out.
All in all, I was there for an hour and a half. All in all, I felt like a big faker.
I kept eyeing families and couples as I made my way through the museum and back down Michigan Avenue, and wondered when my Chicago identity morphed into that of Gal With Kid. (Probably nine years ago. Although, to be fair, it probably started with my nanny days back in 2002.)
I’ve never existed in this town without a smallish person to guide through weaving foot traffic or marvel at the Art Institute’s Miniatures Room or, sure, use as an excuse for upside-down photos at the Bean.
Don’t even get me started on what theatre in this town will feel like for me once the kids can’t go with me.
Like, because they’re in college.
Or Australia.
With babies and busy schedules and nary a text for Mother, reading Ned all by herself and wondering why counting plums with a toddler is adorable and doing so by one’s lonesome is grounds for being escorted from the grocery store- why is the sudden absence of children the sudden absence of whimsy, why.)
So, that’s what September has looked like so far!
Next week will feature at least one Instagrammed cup of coffee enjoyed warm, shortly after it was brewed and, sure, at least a little bit of the work I’ve been unable to finish since the beginning of June.
Maybe even a park with some slides.
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