P is for ….

...Passages. The passage of time…rites of passage…all of that.


Eldest Daughter with Grandma

This week Eldest Daughter turns thirty. A rite of passage for her, and it marks the passage of time for me.

How is it that I can be old enough to have a 30-year-old daughter? I am under no illusion, nor do I feel like I am still in my twenties, nor do I have any desire for that age again. Really I don’t! But I see the sixties on the horizon, and WTF! No matter how I paint it, people in their sixties have always been old people….at least until now.

Eldest Daughter and me, just a few days old

Back to Eldest Daughter. It is a special day for her, and it was a special day for me when she came into my life…3 decades ago. I think back to how my mothering instincts kicked in immediately the moment she arrived. Like a switch…one moment there’s me, all laid back about stuff, taking it as it comes (except for that labor part)…the next minute I might have killed another human being that threatened that little baby girl.

Eldest Daughter has grown up to be a person I would enjoy being around, be friends with, even if I wasn’t her mother. She and I share the same vocation, in the same industry, which is very interesting. We really understand each other’s work.

Eldest Daughter and me, 2 weeks old

We also share interests in some of the same hobbies, like knitting and scrap booking/card making. Don’t tell, but I let her use my Ravelry logon to look around. She says it is like ‘peaking in the closet at Christmas time’ (the closet being where I hid the presents when the girls were little)! And now she and her SO have bought a place with a couple of gardening plots. She is excited to get some iris planted this fall.

And funny! She cracks me up all the time. But sometimes she bosses me around. Impertinent young miss! So now I guess she is getting to be an impertinent older person?

If only Eldest Daughter didn’t live so far away, way back on the east coast. I have had the opportunity to visit a few times since she has been there, and she makes it back here, when she can. I am so fortunate we have that sort of relationship where we really enjoy being with each other, doing things together, sharing conversations on a deep level.

I feel a lot of guilt for not having done parenting as well as I might have. A lot. But I look at my relationships with my kids, and realize that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t do it all wrong.