Season's Changing
The seasons are changing around here, and I don’t feel quite ready for it. I’m not talking about summer to fall. No, between the last weeks of smoke and the very hot August we had, I’ve happily pulled out my sweaters and started making crockpot soups and snuggled up with the girls watching Great British Baking Show.
No, I’m talking about this season of life. I can feel the movement away from playgrounds and playdates into fandoms and hangouts. Forrest has already started to find hobbies he never had time for before, and I’m finding myself figuring out what manga to buy and trying to listen to whatever the new version of the Spice Girls is.
Most of all, I’m feeling the subtle switch from being relentlessly demanded into casually dismissed. It’s not that my kids don’t want to spend time with me. It’s just that my opinion doesn’t count for very much these days. This morning at school dropoff, I was approached by a younger neighbor girl who wanted nothing more than to show me all the tricks she can do on the bars. I watched, using my now-rusty excited voice, “Oh my gosh! Look at you, you’re upside down! I didn’t know you could flip like that!” while the twins rolled their eyes and wandered off to find friends.
We’re not fully out of that summer season though. Just like the warm fall days that peek through, I still get a few moments of “Watch this!” and “Guess what I can do, Mom!” But mostly it’s a lot of “See you laters!” and “Can we have so and so over to play Animal Crossing?” (Does screen time count when it’s actually about bonding with friends?) And there’s a LOT of “You just don’t understand, Mom!” (To which I reply, “Ok, can you help me understand?” followed by the biggest sigh you have ever heard in your life.)
Like the end of summer, I find myself mourning the little losses and talking about them probably too much. “Remember when…”, “Oh I miss…”, “It used to be so cute when…” Then again, it’s also fun to see the little adults within straining to come out. One of my kids has started to read every fashion styling book I can find for her. And now she helps me look my best, assuring me that as soon as she’s tall enough, that coat I love? It’s hers.
And it’s nice to finally maybe be able to use some of my life experience to help them make sense of the new, incredibly social world they find themselves in. The other day we were walking and I was talking about an old friend who didn’t make me a priority and so our friendship never really took off because at some point I had to cash in my chips and realize I couldn’t force her to want to be a better friend to me. I’m not sure why, I think I was reminiscing about a particular restaurant we used to frequent and it just came up. But all of a sudden one of them started crying and startled, I asked what was going on.
“It feels like maybe you’re secretly talking about my friendship with so and so.” I assured her I wasn’t, really, I’m far too self-centered and blunt to make a random conversation surreptitiously about her, but that, in the words of my southern brethren, "A hit dog hollers.” If my story hit a little close to home, then maybe she had some thinking to do.
The seasons are truly changing. And I know that these next few years, like all of the stages before them, will probably be a rollercoaster of growth and change and negotiating rules and talking over parenting problems ad nauseam. I’ve got to admit, I’m 100% here for it. In fact, I’m gonna grab me some pumpkin spice and fall leaves and dive right it.
