I have mixed feelings about getting older.
Mostly, I disliked it quite a fair bit.
It makes me restless and sometimes I feel I am running out of time to get myself “really together” or achieve my ambitions that were made years ago.
Call it a mild mid-life crisis that started this year when I reached my mid-thirties, I think about my mortality, about one’s life’s purpose in the world we live in, and how I am getting older. Not too fun thoughts.
But here’s one of the few things I look forward to as the years go by.
And it’s seeing my children grow and develop into their own unique little characters and observing their different quirks.
The fact that all three of my kids came from the same genetics but are so different from each other still amazes both me and my husband.
This year they turned 6, 4, and 2 years old.
They are bright, precocious, noisy little balls of energy.
At every developmental milestone they achieve, we celebrate with them.
Be it when they started crawling, walking, talking, going to school, cycling without training wheels, or reading on their own.
They stun us with the things they say and are able to do.
And watching them love each other after a fight lets me know we did all right parenting them.
They reveal small nuggets of wisdom that only a child’s unjaded mind can produce.
Their view of the world is yet defined, and they see and embrace everything full on without prejudice.
Every few months they grow out of their clothes and we have to graduate them to larger attire while passing off their outgrown clothes to their younger siblings who also have outgrown theirs.
At this rate, they will be taller than their mother and father when they’re grown. Hopefully.
It is not always easy of course, having children and bringing them up well is one of the most challenging endeavors a person can take on.
And we know that we will have a different set of challenges once they grew into their teenage years.
But that is another chapter that we will have to manage in the future. One which we will have to do our best to help them navigate their feelings and emotions in that confusing season of growth.
But for now, with every year that passes us by, even as me and my husband age and grow older we get to see our kids grow up. That softens the blow of aging for me.
And that is a blessing I will count as their mother.