neener neener boober, you can’t catch me! she sings from ahead, her small feet skidding through wet gravel as she stares at the lupins, the blooming raspberry bushes, the fallen leaves from the storm the day before.
Echoing in my head is a voice, softly, sadly saying “no, I can’t.”
We let go. We release. We cradle these daughters, sons, our children inside us, until we cannot any longer. Each day that follows is another lesson, another reminder on letting go. Without release, there could be no joy. I watch my youngest, my babe fly upwards, her feet barely touch the ground. She runs down the trail to our house, full of long grass and pooled rainwater. Spiderwebs, wild strawberries, aphids.
Only the water stops her fastidious self.
I cannot catch her. I wouldn’t dream of it. To do so would be to stop a star in it’s progress, to hold it from spilling it’s star stuff, to trap it within limits it cannot hold.She is aloft and spinning, and I am merely her maker, her nebula. Spun from my arms and belly, she travels and glows.
I look at other children, the boys and girls in the neighbourhood, and I can see their future. I can see in their eyes where they’re lit, what they’ll look like, who they’ll be possibly. I see tomorrow in all those little faces. I look back at mine, and I see only the glory of their joy, the sweetness of their curiosity, and the fire that burns behind them.
She runs ahead of me most days now, the child who at one time never left my grasp, the warm sense of my side. She takes off into the moody damp of the woods behind our house, stopping only slightly to see if I’m still coming.
I’ll fall farther behind each time.
Spin Me I Pulsate 
I really enjoy reading your posts.
Thanks! 🙂
shivers. mine is only just beginning to do this, leaping ahead, gaining the confidence to run away, beyond me. and i am so, so torn.
what you say about the other children…i can see it too, i always could, those years i taught. but my own are too close, too tied up in my perceptions of myself and their father and the rest of the web of family and history in which we exist and so i see them always frozen, in the now like snapshots.
It’s scary at first. But then your heart fills up and they take the leap…
and it’s true. I can imagine other kids as teens, adults. Bit not mine. I get tiny glimpses, slivers of them then…
This post is so precious- like a tiny cut gemstone.
Awww. Just like Ros. 😀
sigh. just gorgeous.
Curtsies
Beautiful. I’m certain it will happen all too quickly but we wouldn’t dream of catching them anyhow.
It’s all ready much too fast for me…and I know it will only get worse from here…
This was such poetry, Thor. So beautiful…
“She runs ahead of me most days now, the child who at one time never left my grasp, the warm sense of my side.”
How do you do that, make it so melancholy and so happy at the same time? wonderful.
Because the two are part of a whole silly. Like night and day. 🙂
It’s so bittersweet, this time. Isaac pulls his hand from mine all the time now, in stores, at the park, everywhere. I’m both happy that he feels so confident in himself and a little sad that the process of letting go has begun. I’m not so much a baby person and I’ve been saying all along that I like older kids better… and now that it’s staring me in the face I’m finding it hard to adjust.
This is one of your best posts, I think. Just beautiful.
Ros insists on carrying pencils everywhere. I’ll be glad when she forever lets go. 🙂
And thanks Hannah.
My children are still straddling the one step away from Momma but pulling furitively on my hand to come along. I can only imagine the bittersweet of them growing away but upwards.
Sad, but one step closer to being out of the house. 🙂
you always find a way to touch people right where you feel it most 🙂
always gives food for thought, that is one of the things I love about reading you, each time I do I have thoughts around me for a while, a sort of homework to mull over while running around my kids.
yet I have to say that I don’t feel the same sense of bittersweetness at watching her move away from me. not sure if that is a good or a bad thing. maybe its cause at my core, independence is so important. to some level I believe they’ll only really love me if they are independent from me, that if they depend on me it’s not real love.
each time I see her confident, going around and not “needing” me it makes me feel proud and happy. and even more so when she comes back to tell me all about her “adventures”.
maybe it’s because of the way my mother raised me. I don’t know.
like always your writing leaves me thinking… I love that about you.
March, you always totally brighten my day by making me feel like I’m awesome. 😛
And you’re right-it’s tempered by pride in independance.
Thor, you are awesome 🙂
we were out on the deck until dark last night — late supper with neighbors. our girl ran inside and changed into layers of fairy silks and wings then fluttered around the back yard catching fireflies. I was mesmerized watching her approach one, looking truly like a fairy herself… and the firefly would light up and she would pause and retract, then go in again. totally absorbed and confident in her night space… this person with ideas and a plan.
lovely post.
I remember being that child. I wish I could freeze them in glass when that happens.
you wrote earlier about not finding your voice. this sure sounds like you’ve found it. evocative.
Thank you. I believe it’s finding me.
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Oh . . . I feel it. He shakes his tiny hands free from mine more often now. He runs ahead and barely looks back. But then . . . he stops. Waits. Until I’m right behind him.
He giggles, not looking, allowing me to sneak up behind him, scoop him up in my arms . . . while I silently pray that it won’t be the last time.
Poor poor silly Thor… two words: trained monkey. I’ll bet your kids can’t outrun a chimp on a Segway. You should get one. Imagine their surprise when they’re saying “neener neener boober you can’t catch me” when all of a sudden your monkey on a Segway catches up to them.