My Babies

My baby is 39 years old today. Sure, she’s a busy mother, writer, work-at-home, home-schooling person but she’s still my baby.

Come to think of it, I said the same thing last year when her sister turned 40 – “my baby is 40.” I knew she was remarkable but somehow still seemed surprised by her ongoing intelligence and creativity, unfolding year by year, like petals on a flower.

Tears are forming even as I realize how silly this is. They are mature women with busy, productive lives (isn’t that what I wanted?) and I still think of them as my “babies.” I raised them to be adults, that’s what we do. I applaud their accomplishments (like I applauded going potty?), I admire them for being better than me, smarter than me.

But something, that vague something, that is in the heart and has no one word to describe it, is always there.

I feel silly, but I don’t apologize. I’m sentimental - so sue me.

I feel inadequate as a writer that no words seem good enough here but I know there are those who will understand.

Is that what we do? Communicate without all the words because we share a common experience? Or do we just accept each other’s inadequacies?

Or am I assuming too much? That I’m understood by enough people, that it’s okay to just be whatever this is, that others are the same so it’s acceptable? Perhaps I should hold myself to a higher standard of clear thinking and better writing.

I struggle almost constantly with what I am and am not, what others seem to be. Frankly, at this point in my aged life, I feel as though I have failed at almost every undertaking. Nothing looks good enough from where I sit now.

But I loved parenting – still do, though it’s much harder now. Women are different than little girls. I never think of them as inadequate; only their mother is.

I think I’ll explore this more in my work-in-progress about life.

But today, I’ll frost a cake and take it to my baby’s house because today my baby is 39.