Someday

Oren turns nine months old this week. How can that be? I am in wonder of it all. Was he not just two lines on a pregnancy test? Was he not just a flutter of my abdomen? Was he not just that crying, colicky little ball of a baby, red faced and fists clenched? Was he not just a hope for a someday, tucked away inside my very deepest dreams and desires?

But he is real, and here and finally. And he is waving and standing and jibberish and he is just  so  much.

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What is it about having kids that makes you so acutely aware of the passing of time? The old adage, "they grow up so fast" is suddenly so painfully, irrefutibly true. So much so, I feel the realization of it sneak up behind me some days, creeping, striking, knocking the wind right out of me. I lay there for a moment gathering myself, grasping to recover from it's reality, breathing big gulps of air, begging time to slow down. And not just them, it's me too. I've grown up. It actually happened. It happened so fast. And I feel so old some days. And I have wrinkles around the corners of my eyes. And it's strange how suddenly, unconsentingly, one day you're just here.

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You know how when you're a kid and you have literally no idea where your life will take you? You have all these blanks waiting to be filled in someday and life is full of wonder and great anticipation. When everything is still unknown. Anything is possible.

What will I be when I grow up?
Will I fall in love?
Will I ever get married? Who will it be?
Where will we live?
Will I have kids? I wonder what they'll be, boys? girls?
What will we name them?
What will they look like?

And here I am, 28 years old. And I have all the answers to those questions.
All my blanks are filled in.
Faces and places and names. All here, all accounted for.
Somehow it's someday.

And when Wes asks me when will he get to be a grown up, like mommy and daddy, I just swallow hard and answer "someday". And I kiss his cheeks, and hold him against me and breathe in every single fleeting moment because I know someday will be here far, far too soon.