It's never too late until it is

Every night I plan to write, and every night I decided it's too late and I'll do it tomorrow.   Sort of like doing homework.

It's never too late.  But I don't know what I might have wanted to have been.   But, I do agree, it isn't too late for me yet.

I spend hours each day thinking about my kids.  Our kids, Nick's and mine.   We were talking the other day, trying to remember when we last saw Courtney, Morgan and Darcy.  Austin we see a lot.  Chance fairly often.  But these three oldest adult children are off on their own adventures, living their lives, being independent and all grown up.  

Weren't we warned that they would become too dependent if we let them sleep in our bed?  If I "let" them nurse until they were done.  So much of all of those dire predictions were just so wrong.  As we knew they were.  We believed in attachment parenting even before we had a name for what we were doing.  We wanted to be close to our kids.  We wanted to allow them to trust us and to learn and grow as they were/ are ready.  Yes, I yelled.  Spanked a few more times than I could ever be proud of.  Nick got mad sometimes too, but he was much more patient than me.

I love what I do.  I hold babies.  No, that's not my professional title "baby holder".  I work with mothers and their new babies.  I try to help these mothers learn to nurse comfortably and be confident in their own body's ability to not only feed their own baby, but to be their baby's world.  To accept this role as all important.  I do tell them how fast they grow up and leave you.  But I say that more for my sake than their. 

When you are holding a squalling newborn, the last thing on your mind is the tears you will shed as you leave this precious little being at their college dorm for the first time.

The great mystery.  Time.  Chance.  Growth.  Aging.  From the moment of conception we are aging.

I worry about everything.  I am not ever sure what all I do worry about.  Getting old?  Being fat?  Not finishing one project or another.  Watching friends and family getting older.  Including my babies.  My kids.  The flock of adult Sherwoods' that all grew inside of me.  I know that this is the oldest mystery of all time.  Nobody really knows.  Or if they say that they do, we don't believe them.   We (the collective we, not myself) create belief systems, religions, superstitions, all to explain the things we have not figured out how well to explain them

I have pictures of all five kids that I am going to post here.  I'm not sure if I will make any comments on them now, or will wait to do that another tme.