A Friend's Baby Shower

(From 2009)

My dear friend is having a baby, and I attended her shower today. It has been almost a couple of decades since my boys were babies and I was in her shoes. This event really brought back some memories and an odd bittersweet awareness of just how quickly life moves along and beautiful babies have their experiences and grow into young adults. Watching my friend open her gifts, the tiny socks, the darling bibs, the bottles, the new-fangled gadgets to help new parents, all of that with the excitement of being full of life, a fully living being contained within oneself. The decision prevails, to find out the gender or not find out, when you will know anyway for the rest of your life. What an experience. So long ago, yet just yesterday. Then the ensuing 20 (almost 21!) of personality development, life experiences, building character, the joys, the tears, the challenges, the decisions, the moves, the loves, the losses, the support, the ignorance, the "winging it" (they do not come with instruction manuals), lessons learned with the first that get overlooked with the last. As the firsts are all diligently recorded (at least in the first child's baby book...), the series of "lasts" slip by unrecognized (the last bedtime story read, the last bath given, the last jar of baby food, the last nursing session, the last drive to a friend's house, the last enormous food bill, and on and on) and then before I know it they are off on their journeys.

It's all humorous and amazing. And sad, at least in the regard of realizing that those early baby years, as challenging as they can be, are fleeting. Now I get to watch these children/young men move forth in their lives, the foundations of their lives in place to be molded and folded as they experience life.

As my dear friend releases her life as "childless", entering motherhood with all of this ahead of her, I release my "child-filled" life, entering this next stage.