The Time Plays Tricks Edition: an #SoCS #weekendcoffeeshare

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that it’s quarter after 9, Saturday night, and I’m just getting around to setting up this post. I’d say that I wrote it in my journal about twelve hours ago, and that the hours between have been filled with productivity and celebration…in a low key, as befits the wishes of the object of the festivities….but, maybe it’s best if I just pour the drinks, and let you read for yourself…

Age 3 months – already brightening our lives.

July 8, 2017 –

In less than an hour, now, my daughter will be a teenager.

It doesn’t quite seem possible.

Wasn’t it only a couple of years ago that we brought home our sleepy little yellow-tinged bundle, and laid her in her bassinet in the living room?

Where, shortly after that, her brother, not quite three, almost smothered her because he thought she needed a pillow, and couldn’t figure out how to get it under her head?

Has it really been twelve years since her first birthday, when she’d just (finally) gotten her first tooth, and could speak in complete sentences?

Eleven years since the doctor’s question, “Can she say at least six words?” came only a few days after her question,”Mommy, what kind of medicine is this?”

 

Christmas time silliness with her big brother.

Ten years since she could tell you what DNA stood for, and even make a joke of it – “deoxyribonucleic BACID!” – and could quote Shakespeare, but still said, “aminal”, “Psghetti”; “allgalator”, and “NimM’s”?

Nine years since she turned four, and first met Sheet, who would be her constant companion for years to come?

Eight years since she proved herself a natural horsewoman in the making (who later outgrew that passion)??

A day at the races; age 5. Can you tell she had a good time?

Seven years since she lost her first tooth, and made a new best friend?

Six years since she launched her first cottage industry, selling art with her best friend at our local unschooling conference?

Five years since she learned to read – naturally, and quite suddenly?

Four years since she wrote her first poem, largely by accident?

Three years since she attained her first decade, and rediscovered her passion for Littlest Pet Shop characters?

Sometimes she needs to stop and smell the irises….

Two years since she got her American Girl doll, Grace, after half a lifetime of choosing something else at the last moment, when the opportunity came?

Already a year since she started blossoming into the first flush of womanhood, expanding her horizons and refining her passions?

Time plays tricks, I tell you.

Here’s this girl who comes up to my eyes now, who is lovely and mature and silly and moody and still the Force of Nature she’s always been…

Self portrait of a lovely young woman in the making, in her last days of being twelve.

And I know how she got here, and I can do the math….she is 13.

But, somehow, the time elapsed between her arrival at 9:33 on a Thursday morning in 2004, and this moment – 9:02 on a Saturday morning in 2017 – seems like a sustained, mostly happy blur, carrying us along as time works its tricky magic.

Today. Lise is 13 years old – and I am a proud, amazed, and slightly bewildered mother, shaking my head at the perfectly normal tricks time plays.

This post was written for Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday  where today’s prompt is “ick” – by itself or as part of another word. And #weekendcoffeeshare, hosted by Emily at Nerd in the Brain. To learn more about either challenge, click on its title, or the associated icon to beam on over.