Tonight, I watched my little girl graduate from high school. As she marched into the Civic Center with her graduating class, my eyes welled up with tears thinking of how quickly the past eighteen years have gone by.
I used to roll my eyes when my children were young and people would tell me that it goes by “in the blink of an eye”, but now I understand what they mean.
I remember like it was yesterday, the day I found out I was pregnant with Loughlin. Each week that passed with my pregnancy brought me closer to holding my baby, but sometimes those weeks seemed to crawl by at a snail’s pace.
I had a book that had a chapter on each week of pregnancy. I would read the chapter that coincided with the week of my pregnancy but I could never hold myself to just reading about the current week. I would always flip forward to see what I could expect in the weeks to come, wishing I could speed my pregnancy up and get to those final weeks. The countdown seemed endless.
“Fifteen more weeks until I get to see if I am having a boy or a girl, twelve more weeks until my life changes and my days become filled with diapers and feedings, six more weeks until the nights are no longer mine but that of my child who I will hold and rock in my arms forever,” I would think. And finally, in the blink of an eye, my pregnancy was over and I was holding my beautiful baby girl in my arms.
As Loughlin grew into a toddler and more siblings were added to the crew, I constantly heard people say to me, “In the blink of an eye your children will be grown.” I would smile and nod at the person saying this remark thinking they had no idea what they were talking about. When you have six young children there are some days that are really good, like when your child has fewer than two meltdowns in a 24 hour period and the majority of the day goes smoothly enough that you get to actually take a long enough shower to get most of the shampoo out of your hair and even run a brush through your hair.
Then there are those not so great days that drag on and on and it feels as if the sun will never set and the clock will never get close to the hour of bedtime. The days that leave you feeling as if you are raising Ivan the Terrible. I remember on one of those tough days wondering why I was ever in such a hurry to get these children out of me when I was pregnant. They were a heck of a lot easier inside of me! No wonder elephants stay pregnant for two years!
But tonight as my oldest child gets her diploma, I couldn’t help but recall the past eighteen years with my sweet Loughlin. The reality is that when you are raising a child, there are times when it seems like an eternity and then moments like tonight where you realize that really, the next stage of their lives is just right around the corner.
Tonight I realized that what I had been told all of these years since I had my first child is really true. Our children do grow up “in the blink of an eye.”
Looking at this photo, I have to wonder, when did most of them become taller than me???
Share your parenting words of wisdom with Blythe, who as of today is the mom of a college student, two high school students, a middle school student and two elementary students at bwnewsome@hotmail.com.
