It’s been a while…and I forgot to breathe!

Do you ever notice how life soars right away from you? Ughhh!! You blink an eye and before you know it, a year has gone by…then, just like the pop-up red light speed cameras here in Germany, you open your eyes and realize that you forgot to breathe!! Well, that’s where I am at today, folks. I have been forgetting to breath…maybe it’s because of wearing a mask…..who knows!

I am reflecting on the past 17 years of being a mom and I realized this morning that being a parent is much like forgetting to breathe! You bring this little tiny human home that you’ve been blessed with, thinking “oh holy crap…what do I do now?!” – and you forget to breathe. You love and nurture them, kiss their boo-boo’s, hug them as much as you can before they become teenage vermin and want nothing to do with you, cheer for them at high school events, get frustrated with them because they won’t clean their room or strive to get a better grade in math, hurt for them when their heart gets broken – and you forget to breathe.

As a parent – mother, father, birth, adopted, step, or choose-to-be – the only thing you want is for your child to grow into the kind of human that makes the world a better place. Someone who shares their love and does wonderful things in their life. I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter and I was watching the news. There was a segment about some horrific event (I don’t remember what it was because my brain is old!) and I started to cry. The Dude (aka my ex-husband) asked me what was wrong and I replied “what are we doing bringing a child into this ugly world?” – he, very sweetly, hugged me and said “because maybe, just maybe, our child will make the world a little bit brighter” – I smiled and put my hand on my tummy – and I started to breathe again.

And now here we are and she is 17, getting ready to be a senior in high school – and I am forgetting to breathe. We talk about her future, decisions she needs to make about colleges, what she wants to do with her life – and I am forgetting to breathe. I look at her and I still see my little baby that we worked so hard to “get” (science is a beautiful thing); I see the little child who worked in the garden with her dad and her grandpa, who wrote on the side of my car with a rock because she thought it was a chalkboard and she wanted to write how much she loves us (true story!), the little toddler who loved to be in the kitchen banging pots and pans while I cooked….only to realize that she is a lovely young woman who brightens everyone’s day with her infectious smile, her happy laugh, and her excitement for life – and I forget to breathe.

I know she will go into her world, her next phase of life, and she will have heartbreak, joys, disappointments, excitement, sadness, happiness….everything we want for our children to have as adults – and as I watch her maneuver her way through her world, I will start to breathe just a little bit.

The moral of this is try to remember to breathe because before you know it life is on hyper-speed and we all need to breathe to appreciate the gift of life that we’ve all been given.