Maggie turned 13, Cotter turned 16 and I cut my hair.  Not in any particular order of importance, although the haircut is clearly less epic.  I can grow that back, but I will never get a five year old Maggie or Cotter wearing his sister’s barrettes again.

Change is important, vital.  I’m convinced without it things get weird.  It’s sort of like when we bring fresh veggies home from the farmer’s market.  We wipe out the drawers of the refrigerator, and put some new paper towels in the bottom.  Sometimes all the root veggies are together, sometimes the lettuce goes in the drawer, sometimes not and the celery never fits.  At the end of the week there’s always a few stragglers that didn’t make it into a salad or a snack.  They stayed at the bottom of the drawer and are dried up or kind of slimy.  The drawer even gets little droplets of water and the whole thing looks icky.  But, new week, new crop of veggies, new order of things and change.

My children will never be little again.  I know I wouldn’t want them to be.  If they were stuck at five or eleven or even 20 things would get yuck.  I like watching them grow and learn and…change.  Sometimes I miss the little them.  I don’t miss the diaper bag, but I do miss chubby fingers trying to pick up Cheerios.  I had my time with the little ones and I had to say goodbye to get time with who they are now.

Change requires letting go and moving forward, it’s not always as easy as the veggie drawers.  It can be scary and sometimes there’s an urge to hang on and stay right where I’m at, but like the fresh veggies, I love growing, evolving, fun teenagers, so I do a lot of deep breathing and I let go.

The haircut is sort of working for me too.

My thoughts from the laundry room.  No More Night Lights.

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