Overheard from the backseat

After being closed out of a parking spot at the gym and realizing the hours for gym childcare were turning to minutes, we decided on the most logical solution. Abandon mission and opt instead for frozen yogurt. En route to FroYo, I offer you the dialogue: Mommy, we're on the 9th commandment!

> Oh yah, and what does it say?

It says, Do not tell a lie.

> What an important commandment, huh?

Yes. Mommy. Sometimes, even grown-ups tell lies.

*** Later that evening...

Mommy, when you go to the gym after we go to sleep, do you sometimes get tickets?

[I have no idea to what kind of tickets the dearheart is referring. I think she must mean the receipt I get when I pay for the childcare at the gym.]

> Yeah, sometimes I do.

MOMMY! YOU GET TICKETS SOMETIMES!?!

> Oh, you mean like a speeding ticket from a police officer?

YEAH! YOU GET TICKETS, MOMMY?!

> Oh, no. No, I don't get tickets.

MOMMY YOU JUST LIED.

> Ohh, no, honey. I was just joking.

You're such a joker, Mommy.

Just like that.

Average height, average girth, nothing extraordinary that would make it stand out amongst the other deciduous trees that line our yard. Early in the fall, I noticed that this one particular tree was the first to turn color. It was the first to signal the changing of the seasons. It was practically the next day when I was parking the motorino in the driveway and looked to see the tree was singing with color.

It was changed. And then it was changed again, just like that.

I am walking through some changes just like this. Flash! Blink! Change. I don't generally mind change that I have willed. But the changes that our children will, even if we're on board with them, have surprised me with how staggering and irreversible they can be.

Take potty training. Let's go there. Little Man just willed potty training, like so many bazillions of children have, and that was that. He enrolled, he learned, he graduated. Bam.

And here I am, just sort of waiting to pick him up from Safety Town and he's all, Mom! I'm over here! See me walking across the stage and grabbing my college diploma! I'm done!

He's changed. He's on the other side. And I'm standing in the empty space in his room where the changing pad and the diapers and and all the other accoutrements that signal BABY ON BOARD used to be. How?

How did I bemoan all these bottles and unctions and wish for an advance to the next phase? Of course. Because I was "done" with it all. Like someone who had big plans for the space that would formerly be known as the diaper changing area.

The leaves have fallen. The diapers are gone. A new season is here, advancing advancing, not returning, only standing tall in the midst of the discard pile. I rejoice and then I mourn. I try to remember how bright those leaves were. I trace through the pictures of those babies, their cheeks like nectarines, whose diaper changes once ruled my days.

I will likely never change their diapers again.

They will never stop changing me.

Rimbos

I wasn't even sure what Little Man was saying. His eyebrows were raised, his hand was pulling mine, and I had to come see something and, "Hurry, Mommy!" See, see the rimbo, Mommy? Oh oh! It's on the chair! And on the train table! You see the rimbo?

He didn't want me to miss the rainbows, the kaleidoscopic kisses that a setting sun casts on living room furniture, on walls, on otherwise crumb-laden floors.

Isn't that the living definition of the work of every child? To hurry us in order to not miss the fading rainbows? We push them, literally, into the world, checking off milestones, counting down hours until bedtime, our voices escalating as we teach them to hurry to put on shoes, get in the car, and hurry through life.

I go through seasons of trying to obliterate the word "hurry" from my parenting vernacular. In those seasons, I realize I must say that word a dozen times a day.

I know this isn't novel but it did give me pause. What are the things to which I am rushing? To work? To the can? To the Dollar Store before it closes? How often am I rushing to the Bible? To open the door for someone? To see those sweet faces that greet me with unabashed glee?

I want to be the first to rush to see the beauty. I want to be changed by the rainbows quickly fading.

I have been a mother now for 1,643 days. In school years, I'm in the ninth grade. By that measuring stick, I should know a few things. But I am grateful for my little teachers that are not loathe to repeat the fundamentals, and who gently but insistently take me by the hand and make sure I don't miss my life.