nursing girl & frog

I am still in somewhat of a shock that my first born daughter is on her own. The space she left feels vacant, and I think of her all the time. Her life...it is her own now, yet it always was. Now it is just that I have to call her to learn about it. It is such a change, though one I can see is the way of it. (she'll probably want to trade in her cell for a more traditional line!)

I sat today and felt the overwhelming love I always feel when I nurse my youngest daughter. Amulet is 19 months, and she fell asleep at the breast with a darling little frog. Feeling her suckle, feeling the milk well up inside of me and let down for her, knowing that she feels safe and content, I will hang on to these moments and store them away for when I am 90. I won't waste a second of it. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

my girl, my firstborn child...

My blessed first born child has left the nest. She is almost 20, but I don't know where the time went. It wasn't enough. I know that.

As a chid she was precocious and opinionated..and hard. We had our years of difficulties and conflicts, but we grew out of that and moved to a place of female companionship and beautiful friendship. I nursed this child for four years...I remember all those nursing sessions like they were yesterday. Her soft baby hair, her eyes looking up at me from that special angle only a nursing mother sees, her silky skin, the smell of her neck.

Sky rented her first apartment last week, with her best friend. A small place, with little empty roooms and new carpet and the smell of smoke from a previous tenant. I went to see her in her place on Sunday, in the middle of a Michigan blizzard. I brought groceries.

The children loved seeing her apartment. They rolled around on her carpet and Tate said it was better than home. :)



I am so proud of her, but this is very hard. There is an empty space here where she was, and it feels very lonely. I find that I vacillate minute by minute between joy for her and sadness for this loss I perceive. I walk around my house and find little remnants of her. An empty wrapper, a small pile of laundry, her hair in my comb. She was the thing that set my life on course, the person that made me what I am, she was and is the best thing that ever happened to me.

I long for someone to share these feelings with. Someone who would understand me and share this with me. I do not have that and that too, is painful. I think I have some work to do! :)

the gift of time

When I think about all of the gifts that unschooling brings, one blessing stands out in my mind. My children have the freedom to spend vast amounts of time together. And they have that time. It is time I did not have as a child.

I remember my life as a child being hurried and rushed. And not through any fault of my parents! Rushing was a matter of fact for a schooled child. Getting up in the morning, getting through breakfast, riding the bus, making sure to rush in before the bell. All occuring before school. Most of the day was spent rushing from one thing to the next. On the slim chance that I actually felt interested in something going on at school, well, there could never be time to really explore that interest. There was too much else to be done, too many kids to get through it, and a complete lack of caring about whether or not any of us intrinsically felt a curiosity or desire to learn what was going on.

I never even knew my siblings. Oh, I knew that my brothers stunk and that there was no way in hell they were going to get the best cereal each morning. I also knew that we would watch Gilligan's Island together and I was going to get to be Mary Ann. (we would call out who got to "be" any given character). But I didn't know my siblings. I didn't spend any real time with them. I wouldn't have even wanted to if I had the opportunity.

My own children are so different. Their lives, through unschooling, are incredible. They know each other - intimately. Through that knowledge they know themselves. And they play and fight and love intensely every single day. They are in it together, large amounts of time where they are free - in the thick of it, and I am positive that their closeness with transcend childhood.