Sadie looks a million miles away as I glance back at her, so steady and strong and old. How did she get so old so quickly. She has taken on the task of reading this blog now and its fun for her, to look back and revisit and to remember things she didn't even think she remembered until now. I have also been revisiting. Thinking about John, and then thinking about homeschooling, young childhood and now this, this new stage, adolescents, tweens and of course Molly is 22 with a child of her own (how did that happen).
It's a miracle and a curse how quickly these last few years have blown by and what happened and what will happen and what is clear and what is so unbelievably unclear. I write these words from an apartment I have rented and things are changing

at a neck breaking pace. And yet there are these slow moments where everything seems to stand still, like now, in this apartment, in the middle of my work day, having an unexpected break, eating my sandwich and listening to the turkeys outside my window. My friend Jeremiah calls them dangerous dinosaurs and has threatened to punch them if they approach him and I know he will if I don't intervene but I think they are sweet today, gazing up at me like they know me, like maybe they could give me some advise but for that tiny pea sized brain.
Sadie, Nora, Jonah and Gary are going to the beach house for the first time without me and I can't believe it. I can't believe my children are ever anywhere without me.
But they are.
And they have their own angels and their own ideas and hopes and dreams that sustain them and welcome them even when it is rainy out and there are no friends to play with. I'm so glad they have each other. This week I am working and have some easy plans to see Ashley tonight for coffee and to ride my bike a lot and to have lunch with my maid of honor at my wedding and this weekend to go to Maine to participate in a triathlon. Scary stuff, easy stuff, good stuff, different stuff.
I have hung a picture in my apartment of the three little kids and I at the Museum of Science from 7 years ago. Jonah was around three and needy and appears to be demanding something of me as I gaze in to the camera with the biggest mommy smile ever. I remember that day so well. Sadie was in her Red Sox shirt, short haircut pretending to swing a bat in the picture and Nora was looking away from the camera probably caught up in something much more interesting like a painting on the wall or a family walking a dog outside.
I love this picture.
The only other picture I have on the refrigerator is of Jonah and I at Justin Timberlake last year. We got second row tickets thanks so my dear friend Jimmy. He and I are sporting a really "cool" look and ready to rock. It's a younger version of me which is weird because it is also an older version of me. And this is what I am learning today, that with age and wisdom also comes this surprising innocence and humility and wonder as if all those things I knew when I was 30 have completely been knocked off the kitchen table, swept up and thrown outside along with all sorts of other crazy notions like predictability, self will and the fact that I have so very very little control over my spinning life. And yet, like a child, I awake everyday before the sun, excited to start again. I've been waking up like this for years but recently its with hope and kid like expectation. Last winter I awoke early to an unbelievable heaviness weighted down with age and something I can't quite put my finger on but it doesn't really matter right now anyhow.
I spent four days with these kids, now 15, 12 and 10 running around to movies, the ocean and around our community. They are my greatest joy. I am glad I can bring a joyful mother to them again.