Home Grown

I swear it wasn’t that long ago that I had three kids under the age of 3. Sometimes it feels like it was just a few short months ago that I had a toddler wrapped around each leg and a baby in my arms. Only a couple of weeks back that all three could still climb into my lap together for a bedtime story. Just the other day that they were learning to pedal tricycles, ski down the bunny hill, and sound out words.

But somehow, now, my oldest has to bend slightly to hug me, and next week my not-so-little littlest wraps up her elementary school days in a place that’s been a part of our family’s life and daily routine for most of the last decade. She’s ready to move on – the kids always are by the time they’ve progressed from small kindergarteners to almost-teenagers. And I’m calmer about this milestone than I thought I might be, but I’m betting it’ll take a while before I get used to turning the other way, toward a different school, at the bottom of our hill for the daily drop-off and pickup.

I remember standing in the elementary school foyer on the first day of kindergarten for my older two children. Back then, I was used to preschool-sized kids who couldn’t quite pronounce their Rs and were still learning to tie their shoelaces. On that morning, as my two 5-year-olds stuck close to my side, a bit anxious about their first day in the “big school,” the 6^th graders seemed enormous and so grown up.

Now, of course, my perspective has shifted. I am used to (although sometimes still surprised by) the still-growing stature of my daughter and her 6^th grade classmates, who are all approaching or have already surpassed my height. But those kindergarteners seem so tiny – even if it sometimes seems like last week that my own kids were that small.  

The end of each school year is one of those times when it’s easy to contemplate the changes in our children. Some are moving on from preschool, others – who, really, were learning their shapes and letters in preschool not so long ago – are graduating from high school or (gulp) college. So, their growing up offspring is at the top of many parents’ minds.

When your children are babies, it seems as if everyone – parents of older kids, strangers in the grocery store – tells you to “enjoy every minute,” that it passes quickly. And, on some level, you know they’re right. But then you’re also in the midst of changing diapers and cutting food into tiny pieces and being woken at all hours of the night. It’s exhausting.

All that exhaustion fades into the background, however, when a small human, whose world literally revolves around you, hands you a bouquet of dandelions or blows a kiss from the outfield in a t-ball game or snuggles in with a favorite stuffy for a cuddle – or says in a voice impossibly sweet, “I love you, Mama.”

And the next thing you know, they’re asking for the keys to the minivan so they can go out with their friends. OK, OK, so we’re not quite there yet. But judging by how fast these years seem to go, we’ll get there next week. Or tomorrow. Or five minutes from now. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's June 10, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.

Time Flies

This week, my oldest offspring selected classes for their first year of high school. Even as I type that sentence, I can hardly wrap my mind around it: two of my children will be high schoolers in a few short months, and my baby a middle schooler. No matter that two of them are now taller than I am, and the third is gaining on me quickly, I can still picture all three as newborns, toddlers, little kids.

The girls, when they were little.

I don’t think I would say I miss the days of tending to infants or preschoolers or any other bygone stage
of my children’s younger years. I have loved each of my children – and gotten to know them – through the progression of their childhoods. Despite the trials of the “terrible twos” and the “sassy sixes” and the excessive eye rolling that happens in my house these days, I’ve enjoyed most parts of every phase of their growing up.

When I look at photos from years past, or when we’re sitting around swapping “Remember When” stories, it is easy to feel nostalgic, though I don’t have any desire to go back in time. Contemplating the tiny, chubby-cheeked, big-eyed kids in those photos, however, makes me realize – again and again – how quickly these years pass by.

It really wasn’t all that long ago that I had three kids under the age of 3. Then three preschoolers, then three in elementary school. Back when they were all in diapers – and pretty much dependent on me for everything – someone told me, “The days are long, but the years are short.” Whoever first uttered that adage obviously had raised children.  

These days, I sometimes feel a sense of woeful panic at how few years of childhood my children have left. Four more years. That’s what remains until my older two move on to whatever comes after high school. A mere four years ago, they were in the midst of their elementary school years, and four years from now, they’ll be legal adults. It doesn’t seem possible – to me or to them.

One of my children has said to me several times lately, “It seems like time is passing by so quickly.” And it’s no wonder. These middle school years are the bridge between being a little kid and becoming an almost-grownup. My teenagers are newly and acutely aware that childhood has an expiration date, even if the exact deadline is obscure.

I have a clear memory of an 11-year-old me sitting with a friend on a summer afternoon, days before we entered middle school, and saying to her that it felt like time was flying by, that soon we’d be in high school, then college, then who-knows-where. In that moment, that looming change seemed overwhelming. I could see adulthood on the horizon, even as it was still years away.

She laughed, and a few minutes later, we were off again, riding our bikes through the hazy summer day, as carefree as the children we still were. That’s the mercurial nature of this time in my children’s lives – one moment thoughtfully considering some serious responsibility, the next playing a silly made-up game with friends or siblings.

I can also clearly remember the anxiety of dropping my kids off at preschool for the first time, then at kindergarten in the “big school” a couple of years later. Even back then, I thought, “How are they so big already?!?” Sometimes, still, it feels as if just last week they were so small I could snuggle all three together in my lap. I can’t imagine how I’ll feel when they step out into the great big world all on their own.

And so I keep reminding myself – in the moments when I’m facing eye-rolling, contrary, children in the process of growing up – that these days, too, may sometimes seem long, but the years are as short as ever. I bask in the happy times we spend together and in our shared adventures. I try to offer advice and comfort in those moments when these children of mine feel stressed or sad or worried. I strive – not always successfully – to keep my temper when they push buttons and boundaries. And when one of them needs a hug, I lean in and hold on, for as long as they want, until they let go.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's April 8, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Stolen Runs

Sunday afternoon, I snuck in a few ski runs with my teenaged daughter. She’d spent much of the day competing in a ski race and was tired from the hours on the hill, the earlier-than-usual race day wake-up call, and the emotional and mental exertion of competition. Add to that this winter’s weirdness of booting up and eating lunch in a cold car, and I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d opted to go home and curl up someplace warm and cozy with a good book.

 But I’m glad she chose to ski with her mom instead.

The older my children get, the more I find myself cherishing the stolen moments – an unexpected ski through the woods with my son, a quiet hour of piecing together a puzzle with my youngest, an afternoon on the mountain with my oldest girl. There are plenty of times where these growing children of mine retreat to their rooms as soon as they are home from school, or skate off to the lift with their friends without a backwards glance, or are aggravated by my very presence. And I’m (mostly) OK with that. It’s all part of the process of growing up.

There are also many moments of teenage angst, siblings annoying each other, the stress of making their way through middle school – on top of the constant curve balls of doing so during a pandemic – and a mother (me) who doesn’t always have the patience to gracefully dance through it all.

Somehow, Sunday afternoon, I convinced Ella to keep skiing. Decision made, we clicked into our skis and pushed away from the race day hubbub toward the lift. We headed to the summit of Cannon, passing through the mid-mountain snowmaking fog to rise into the cold sunshine of a world above the clouds.  

This late in the day, many skiers had gone home, so we had our choice of trails, without having to human-slalom our way around other skiers.

Not so long ago, I brought up the rear when skiing with the kids in case they fell and needed help, or to make sure they turned the right way at trail intersections. I hoped, in those days of snowplowing and pony slope runs, that there’d come a time when the skiing pace was a little bit faster. Now, I play caboose because I don’t have a prayer of keeping up. I love watching my kids race ahead of me, all fearless speed and nimble turns.

But Sunday afternoon wasn’t about keeping up so much as just hanging out. We chatted on the chairlift – about what, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t recall the specifics of our conversation, but I am holding tight to the feeling of just being with my daughter. No stress, no angst, no more race day nerves.

Just a mom and her girl, sunshine and snow, and a few stolen ski runs. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's January 14, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Rooms of Their Own

They both looked a little forlorn at bedtime Sunday: my daughter all the way upstairs, a full story above the rest of us; my son tucked into bed in his usual place, but without the company of his twin sister across the room they’d shared since they were toddlers and had to vacate the nursery to make way for their baby sister.

We’ve been talking about separate bedrooms for months, and with our weekends free for the first time since Thanksgiving, we spent most of Saturday making the long-awaited switch. We muscled unwieldy furniture through narrow doorways and along stairways and tight hallways. There were beds to take apart and move and reassemble, heaping piles of clothes to relocate, and dust bunnies to sweep from the hidden corners where they’d long been hiding.

With all the heaviest lifting done, it was fun to watch the kids expand into their own spaces, arranging and rearranging toys and trinkets, putting things wherever they wanted without the potential of invoking a sibling-roommate’s ire.

Once my daughter was moved out of the shared bedroom and into her bright and solo realm upstairs, my son had an entire room to himself to organize. No more shared closet and dresser, plenty of space for spreading out the toys normally stuffed under his bed, a place for his saxophone and books.

Sharing a small bedroom had become harder the older and bigger the children grew, and the more assertive of their own individuality. There were arguments over whose mess needed picking up, who was standing in the way of the dresser when it was time to put laundry away, and who was just too invasive of the other’s personal space.

Along with the inevitable squabbling, however, there were also sweet moments of room sharing: the summer mornings when I’d find all three kids reading quietly together in one room or another, the happy playing of made-up games, the secret conversations in the dark when they were supposed to be asleep.

This move – like so many moments in the parenting saga – inspired mixed feelings for me. Even as I try to encourage my children to grow and find their own place in the world – OK, in this instance just their own place in our house – I find myself often inwardly begging them to stop growing up so darned fast! I want to nurture their growing independence and confidence, but at the same time I lament that I am, ever so slowly, moving further from the center of their lives.

This is what my mother would call giving children both roots and wings: roots so they will be secure in knowing where they come from (and where they can always return); wings so they are free to explore as they will, to find their own direction. It is a constant parental balancing act to locate that happy place between the root planting and the wing building.

My children are not babies anymore. This is no surprise to anyone, of course. But I am regularly shocked to notice how big they are, how much they are growing all the time. It seems both ages ago and yet not so long past that there were two tiny babies snugged into a crib next to our bed, then the nursery across the hall, then one more room down to make way for another baby. Now the three of them are spread throughout the house, testing their wings just a little bit, even as their roots grow strong.  

Saturday, the day of the big move, the kids were so excited about all the newness of the room shift, the novelty of all that extra personal space. Still, the older two decided to have a sleepover in my daughter’s new room. Despite their newfound liberation, it seemed, they were not quite ready to give each other up. They needed one more night in the same room. One more night of talking past lights-out, of waking up and knowing they were not alone.

Sunday they looked a bit forlorn at bedtime, but that could have just been a sentimental mother’s perception. My son had a great book to read and was soon contentedly lost within its pages. My daughter had all that space to enjoy and no brother to tell her when to turn out the light. Now, a few days in, everyone seems perfectly content.

We’d been talking about the move for months, and I know it was time. But I’ll miss the sound of their small voices floating down the stairs in the post-bedtime darkness – still the voices of children, still near enough for me to hold, still together – now that they’re in rooms of their own.  

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the April 8, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Separation Anxiety

Last year I bought alarm clocks for my children. The idea was that the clocks, set with a chirping bird alarm tone, would rouse the kids on school days, allowing me to evade the sleepy protests of, “I don’t want to get up yet. It’s too early.” That plan worked, most days. The other days I was calling upstairs to urge children from the covers, or going there myself to nudge them out of cozy beds and into school day routines.

Once upon a time... they all fit on my lap.

This fall, after a summer of lazy mornings, we left the alarm clocks idle and returned to the practice of me waking the kids, opening window shades to the weak morning light, bending down for quick kisses on slumber-drowsy heads. In the frenzied early morning rush, I breathe in the sleepy aura of my children before they fully emerge from their blanketed enclaves and feel my heart twinge a bit at how big they are becoming, how far away from the pillows their feet seem to be now.

How long will they let me do this, I wonder? Tuck them in at nighttime and wake them in the morning with a kiss? How many more years? How many more days?

My son, the tallest of my children, has grown higher than my shoulder. The littlest one is now up to my armpit. Two of my children will turn 9 years old in a couple of months, reaching that half-way point to 18, when they will likely fly the coop of home. I am becoming acutely aware that this magical time of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and easy innocent beliefs will not, actually, last forever. I find myself lately clinging for dear life to the fading smallness of my children.

They are at a point now where they are apart from me more than they’re with me. They are at school or with friends, exploring on their own or together, or simply holed up in their rooms with a good book and a hearty dose of imagination. They do not need to know, as they once did, where I am at all times. More and more, the stories they tell are accounts I am hearing for the first time, not things we have experienced together. I am thankful they still share these what-happened-today tales with me.

I remember, not so long ago, feeling a vague sense of relief as the children reached early milestones. When they first slept through the night. When they were potty trained and we, finally, no longer needed to order diapers by the case. When they figured out how to make their own toast in the morning or slap peanut butter and jelly between two slices of bread and call it lunch. When they could ski on their own, without me holding them, and ride their bikes without training wheels. When they learned to communicate in words spoken and write notes in perfectly imperfect child’s handwriting and read words from a page all on their own.

Those were all liberating – for me and for the children. That is, after all, a main objective of parenting: to encourage independence in thought and action and to help children, gradually, achieve their ownness – their own voice, own path, own happiness. Even as my heart aches at how much and how quickly my children are growing, it fills, too, as they continue to discover and embrace their own personas, always reaching toward the next milestone.

The truth is that at some point my children’s paths and their happiness will be far less wrapped up in mine. Someday, if I do this right (and probably even if I don’t), my children will go out into the world without me. They will, essentially, no longer need me. But for now, they still do, even if it is not as complete a need as it used to be.

We have progressed through many changes, including bedtime routines. First there was rocking to sleep with the nighttime feeding. Then reading bedtime stories with three children nestled, somehow, together on my lap. For a while the children wanted lullabies and happy things to think about and exactly five Mama kisses before they drifted off to sleep. The littlest one still requires a spider check before she is tucked in, to ensure there are no creepy-crawlies lurking in the corners of her bedroom, and she often requests extra hugs and kisses and invents reasons to prolong the tucking-in process.

Most evenings, we all still read together, although the children sit around me now; they are too big to occupy my lap anymore. Then off they go to their own rooms and their own books to read. The older two are often so engrossed in whatever they’re reading that they are reluctant to pause for a bedtime hug. But I sneak in there anyway, maneuvering between child and book, pilfering all the hugs I can, for as long as they’ll let me do it. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 13, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

Wonderfully Exhausting

As soon as we turned our bikes from pavement onto the dirt single track, the littlest one let out a petulant, disbelieving groan. Somehow, in the excited discussion about going for a family bike ride, she hadn’t expected THIS: bumpy dirt, knobby roots to maneuver, long grass scratching against bare legs. Through the course of the ride – a mere two miles or so – we went from frustrated to joyful, back and forth, a dozen times.

“A mixture of wonderful experiences and parental exhaustion,” is how another mother – with two children younger than mine – recently described her family’s vacation. I feel as if that is a pretty accurate description of nearly every family outing. And, many days, of raising kids, no matter how old they are.

Growing is hard work. Learning new skills is hard work. Figuring out all the different ways the world operates is hard work. It is sometimes exhausting for the kids and the parents. It is sometimes exhilarating. Often, it is both of these – exhausting and exhilarating – nearly simultaneously.

Soon after the mini meltdown over the bike ride’s turn into the woods, we came to the biggest beaver dam I have ever seen. The kids hopped off their bikes and scampered over to check out the long, pointy-ended logs the beavers had felled. They examined how the sticks went together to create the dam and the section that had been breached, allowing water to flow through. We found a wildflower we didn’t know and snapped a picture of it to remind us to look it up later. (Bunchberry, it turns out.)

Riding over the roots was challenging. The complaining about said roots – and working to keep my parental composure as a meltdown ensued – was slightly exhausting. Discovering the beaver dam and checking it out was a pretty wonderful experience, and hopefully one my kids will remember – and want to relive on some future bike ride along the same trail.

I remember being on family hikes as a kid and feeling as if they would never end, whether we were on a short jaunt or a hut-to-hut overnight trek. But once we reached the top, the reward was great: a sense of personal accomplishment, and amazing views of the lowlands from which we had ascended, stretched out now far below.

What I remember most from those adventures are the stories we’ve told over and over: playing cribbage with other hikers, eating weird green pasta in one of the huts, the thick clouds atop Mt. Lafayette that obscured the rest of the world, the weight of my little brother’s backpack after a day of collecting rocks along the trail.

From those outings (which I imagine included a good dose of my own folks’ parental exhaustion) I gained a lasting appreciation of the outdoors and exploring it, the realization that hard work often pays big dividends, and the knowledge that the view from a mountaintop, from a height attained by your own will and power, offers a vastly different perspective than the one you had pre-climb.

After we left the beaver dam last weekend, the rest of the ride included an ascent along a bumpy trail and a bit more complaining. But also the downhill on the other side of the hill, time spent drawing with sticks in the sand along the edge of a brook, scampering across the water over logs, and stopping to look at swallowtail butterflies. On the final stretch of single track, my youngest child slammed on her brakes and reached down to pick up the large empty cocoon of a cecropia moth: a tangible treasure to take away from the ride.

We emerged from the woods about a mile from where we’d parked the car, and the mostly-downhill paved return was smooth sailing. There was one final challenge at the end of the ride: a super-steep climb to reach the car. My older daughter was in the lead and pedaled her way to the top, then came back to cheer the others on. All three made it, pedal strokes gradually slowing with the exertion as they neared the top, arriving tired but happy.

I hope they remember – as I do – the happy more than the tired, that they take from these adventures more of the wonderful than the exhausting. I hope these experiences provide my children the awareness that often at the far side of a challenge is a big view, a thrilling rush of adrenaline, lessons learned, and memories to hold through many more adventures. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the June 12, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

Letting Go

She pedals confidently now, blond ponytail flapping from beneath her bike helmet, little legs pumping furiously to keep up with the bigger kids as she makes her way up the driveway, down the road, through the woods.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. As my youngest daughter learned to ride her big girl bike last year, she was a little shaky and a bit timid. While I ran up and down our long driveway alongside her and eventually watched her pedal away on her own, I pondered the obvious parallels between the evolution from trike to training wheels to two-wheeler and the process of parenting children as they grow up and figure out the world around them, gradually expanding their horizons beyond our own view.

We parents are forced to let go, a little at a time. First our children roll, then they crawl, then they walk, then they run. Before we know it they’re ditching the training wheels and popping wheelies, skiing fast down steep trails, reaching new heights in the classroom, on the field, the playground and beyond.

At first, she’d wanted nothing to do with pedaling. She preferred her pink, wooden balance bike – a two-wheeled set-up without pedals – which allowed her to always be touching the ground with a foot or two. Taking both feet off the ground was too unnerving, even for a girl who has spent her earliest years determinedly matching the pace and challenge of her older brother and sister. If they dare to tell her they can do something faster or better, she quietly sets out to prove them wrong.

One morning last spring, with the snow gone from even the shadiest corners of the yard, she decided that she was ready, at last, to pedal. She was unsteady in her first attempts. And so I ran alongside her, bent over and grasping her seat with one hand and her handlebars with the other, as she found her balance and gained confidence.

Soon she needed me only to hold the seat, helping to control her speed, correcting the line if she veered too sharply off course. After several trips up and down the bumpy dirt driveway, she was ready for me to let go and run next to her, close enough to reach out and steady the occasional wobble. Within an hour, she was off and pedaling on her own. When her brother and sister returned from school that afternoon, they were excited to coach their little sister at the childhood skill of pedaling really fast, then slamming on the brakes to make skid marks in the driveway.

We hold onto our children tightly only so long before they demand their freedom, pedaling away solo with nary a backward glance to see if we are still watching, waiting, ready to lend a steady hand in case they stumble. That’s as true of growing up in general as it is of the specifics of learning to ride a bike.

As my daughter has figured out how to balance steering and pedaling, how to make long, wiggly skid marks in the dirt and pace herself on the hills, she has, I hope, learned a few larger lessons as well – even if she may not recognize them just yet.

Sometimes you hit bumps and pot holes you didn’t see coming. Some of these you can cruise right through, regaining your balance quickly; others make you fall down. When the bicycle of life throws you in the dirt, it’s OK to cry a little bit, but eventually you have to get back up, dust yourself off, and keep going. Climbing hills can be exhausting, but the reward of flying downhill on the other side is usually worth the effort. There’s a great big world out there to explore, but you have to be brave enough to move beyond your comfort zone to get there.

Not long after the pedaling breakthrough, we were embarking on family outings through the woods, the kids’ first mountain biking adventures. The littlest biker, the only one without gears to shift, pedaled ferociously to keep up, bouncing jarringly over rocks and roots, but keeping her balance.

This spring, she got a new bike, one with gears and hand brakes. It is purple, and bigger than she was used to, and she is still figuring out how and when to shift. Still finding her balance on the steepest and bumpiest parts of the trail, where she is sometimes momentarily – and frustratingly – paralyzed by nerves. Still determined not to be left behind.

And I am still walking that unending parenting line of trying to help, holding on when she needs me to (and will let me) and encouraging her to figure it out on her own, to overcome her fears and meet a challenge I know she can handle, even if she’s not yet sure she can.

Last year, when she was still learning to pedal, my daughter insisted she needed me to hold her seat as she descended the big hill into our driveway. The steep pitch, combined with a sharp turn at the end, seemed a bit too scary to tackle on her own. I knew she could do it, but I grasped her seat with one hand until she told me to let go, knowing that soon enough she wouldn’t ask me to hold on. That I’ll have to keep letting go, a little at a time, and watch as she makes her own way down the driveway through the woods, into the world. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the May 22, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

Motherly Musings

The other day, in a moment of motherly musing, I was remembering how my son used to call me from another room or a different part of the yard when he would realize I was out of his sight. “Mama?” he’d say, the slightest twinge of anxiety edging his voice. When I’d answer, he always gave the sweetest response: “I love you.”

He was just making sure, in all those queries, that I was nearby, and I figured the “I love you” was the façade of a growing-up boy who didn’t want to announce outright that he was nervous when he lost track of where I was in relation to him. He doesn’t do that anymore, and, like most bits of my children’s growing up that fade until I suddenly realize they are gone, I don’t know when he stopped.

It seems to happen in fits and starts, this growing up process. One day I’ll look at my son, and he seems abruptly three inches taller, or my daughter’s face appears unexpectedly mature and I wonder where my little girl has gone, or the littlest one decides she doesn’t need me to walk her into the classroom each morning.

Now my son, who once needed to know where I was at all times, wanders confidently through his familiar domain. He goes on regular solo expeditions, wandering far into the fields beyond the yard, although he often convinces the dog to keep him company. He has even ridden his bike to his grandparents’ house around the corner without me realizing it until he appeared again at my side and I thought to wonder where he’d been.

At social gatherings and school events, all three of my children are now generally comfortable running off to play with friends. Some children, I’m convinced, do that from the first moment they are independently mobile, scampering out of their parents’ grasp as quickly as possible. Not mine. It seems just a week or two ago they were constantly hovering at my side, and I was endlessly trying to shoo them away to play and leave me with a few inches – and a few welcome moments – of personal space.

As I’ve watched my children gradually gain independence, I’ve come to appreciate both the freedom to move and converse without a child or three clinging to my leg and the moments when they come back to sit with me. I used to be able to hold all three at once to read stories; now, when one of my children climbs onto my lap, it is all long legs and pointy elbows until they settle in. But the settling in is as sweet as ever. They are, all three, still young enough that when we are walking somewhere – down the driveway, through the woods, along a sidewalk – someone (or two) will hold my hand.

There was a time not so long ago that I took walks close to home with a baby strapped to my chest and a toddler gripping each hand. Now, hand-holding has become a test of how fast they’re growing up. As we walk together, I often put my hand out and spread my fingers, holding my breath as I wait to see what will happen. Thankfully, my hand is filled each time, still, with a smaller one to hold.

For that I am grateful, and will be for as long as it lasts, this hand-holding and couch-snuggling and bedtime-story-reading. Sometimes it seems I am the one who needs to be reassured of my children’s closeness. I am the one calling out to make sure they are still within shouting distance. I am the one seeking spontaneous hugs, sneaking in an extra squeeze, trying to store up all that closeness in my heart for the inevitable day when I will reach out my hand and they will be too grown up to hold it.

At ages 7 and 5, my children are at a magical stage where self-reliance and proud independence coalesce with the lingering attitude that Mama is pretty cool. They will entertain themselves happily for hours (except for the times when they’re harassing each other, but let’s focus on the good moments here). They are super fun skiing, mountain biking, and soccer-playing companions. They get themselves dressed in the morning, get their own snacks, brush their own teeth, and put their own laundry away. In short, I no longer have to do everything for them, but they still, usually, like having me around.

I have often heard my own mother say that a parent’s role is to foster in her children both roots and wings: a sense of place, of home, but also the confidence, skill, and knowledge to take off and fly to new heights, new places, new experiences. I am already slightly terrified that my children will fly away some day, as I did once. But I want them to be ready for that day when it comes. And I want them to know where home is, too, that when they need me, I’ll be here.

My son still calls to me regularly from the other room or across the yard or down the stairs. Only now, when he calls, it is often, “Mom?” instead of, “Mama?” And it is generally followed up with a question about something (“Where are my soccer cleats?”) or to share some glimmer of newly acquired knowledge (“Did you know that kinkajous are nocturnal?”) or seeking permission (“I’m going outside, OK?”).

As I answer each of his queries, I add my own, “I love you.” And still, thank goodness, the reply comes, “I love you, too, Mom!” as he bounds off into the world.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 24, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.