Last night she cleaned out her room-took everything off the walls, emptied the closet, donated/tossed/packed every bit of clothing that was in her dresser.  The recycling bin is filled. I put a huge bag for Goodwill in my trunk. She has two big suitcases packed for her summer in NYC, and three boxes put aside for Berkeley, several bins of her favorite books (her love of reading has been a constant), and a few bins of keepsakes for storage. That's a wrap. I can now sell/donate the off-white little girl furniture that we picked out 19 years ago in Baltimore, that has moved from our 1929 Tudor in Mount Washington, and then to the big new house in Howard County, to here in her teen room in San Diego-all the iterations of our life together as a family. We'll paint over the hot pink and put in a closet shelving system, buy a double bed and a desk for B (that he himself will only need for a year before he goes off to college), and A will finally get his own bedroom, after sharing for his whole childhood.  Suddenly, our house that was always filled and lively and loud, is seeming awfully quiet and too big for just us. I know we'll readjust to the space, and I'll calibrate meal sizes and weekend plans, and it will be a new version of our family and wonderful too. We'll still have visits and vacations and special times together as the six of us-but all of us really "home" and our own unit of six is now a memory.

K was saying she really misses when her kids were little-and I hear that-I loved having babies and toddlers and little people. But I don't miss the broken sleep, and the endless snacks and sippy cups and buckling screaming, squirmy toddlers into car seats on hot days. It was so much tougher than I acknowledged at the time. It was what I wanted more than anything in the world, and I am so grateful I had an abundance of it, but man-exhausting. I have such happy memories of Friday night dance parties and Disneyland days and all of us trouping into Starbucks and holding someone on my hip at all times. But I also have a balanced view-parenting a determined toddler/preschooler/school aged child meant so much patience and creativity --and then intense guilt when I would invariably lose it all. I didn't like my mothering a lot of the time. I'm finding it so much easier to parent older kids (not that I don't yell/lose my temper/have regrets about what I say in the heat of the moment.) I had kids with motor and emotional challenges-there were years of OT sessions, and speech therapies, and "things to work on at home" and watching them be aloof or "different" than their same age peers was brutal in my head. The thoughts I would have, and the feelings I would try and buffer: Would they ever have "true" friends? Would they learn how to "fit in"? Would they be able to do the physical things that their same age group seemed to do with ease? What does their future hold?? Oh my god-it was so incredibly painful to watch them and worry and to not know and feel so fucking helpless. On the plus side, and so different than what K is working through now, I saw almost 20 years ago that you can't control your children or their actions/feelings/outcomes. Even when your baby is just a year old-and you're dressing them in cute outfits and picking their play group-you have ZERO control of their bodies and minds. But I tried to do that for years-and I let that weigh on me-literally weigh on me. I carried around 50 pounds of guilt/fear/stress. This was the year that not only did E grow up and acknowledge her own beauty and power-but I did too. I realize completely that she's just fine-and when she's not-she can figure it out on her own. I can't solve it for her. I can't solve it for any of them. And the burden is off-just like that. I can release all the need to try and hang on, and control, and the worry of how they will be or what they will do.  They will be fine-because it's their own journey, not mine, and it never, ever was.

Mother's Day 2018. What are moments that stand out to me that typify the joys of being a mother? There was the Milkshake concert in the fall of 2004 on the steps of the Baltimore Museum of Art. I was holding blue eyed baby A, with little E and B at my side, and I was crying because I was so happy. The big family with the adorable baby and toddler and darling little girl, the poignant music about appreciating having small kids and the beauty of life, a gorgeous fall day on the east coast: all my dreams were realized and encapsulated in that moment.  There was another time when Gabriel was a toddler and we were driving up to Pennsylvania for a Sunday outing-and we'd stopped at a Starbucks and someone commented on what a beautiful family we had.  I got that same flash of joy last summer in Kauai, sitting outside at a food truck, laughing, enjoying being on vacation in such a beautiful spot. A mom sitting at the next picnic table offered to take a family picture of us, and after I posted it, Debbie commented that I looked like a Queen surrounded by my subjects-and that's how I felt: absolutely glorious and brimming with joy. There are, of course, many more harried moments of racing to get various people to various places, with Target stops and last minute projects and thrown together meals that half of my family doesn't like. But I can see those times are winding down.  Diapers and sleep deprived nights are a distant memory, and like a flash, fixing lunch boxes and monitoring screen time will come to an end too . What will remain, I think, are the more special moments because of their rarity. As my children get older, my role as a mother evolves too, and my appreciation for them grows. I never foresaw how happy it would make me to see my older kids talking together, listening to my younger two play together, while not even being part of their discussions or fun. Just the observation of them as interesting, funny and kind people on their own-and liking each other-that's the best gift I could ever receive.