Change

“Just when I found out the meaning of life, they changed it”-George Carlin

Everything is always changing. We can’t control what happens and yet we never stop trying. When a baby is born it has spent the last nine months floating around, completely content with just being. Miraculously, the baby gets fingernails and eyelashes and forms its organs and from the beginning its little heart beats and blood flows.  All we can do is sit and wait and see what happens. We have very little control over the whole process. (Other than taking care of our physical selves)

If only we realized that this is what really happens our whole lives and all we have to do is accept that everything is constantly changing and all we need to do is BE.

 Our baby turns into a toddler and suddenly it is time to let them go a little bit.  “I do it myself” they start to say more and more.  And then your life changes again when you leave them in their nursery school classroom for the first time. As exciting as it is it’s a sad day too. They lose their first tooth and will never have that baby face again and it’s changing. We can’t control it. Friends become important and somewhere along the way your kids life stops becoming all about you and starts to become all about them. It is so hard for a parent to let that go.

Kids are like little Zen masters, always teaching us about ourselves. What we are made of and who we really are. Who else but your own child could make you scream and want to pull your own hair out while you simultaneously love them more than life? Who else can bring out in us our own deepest fears that we didn’t know we even had until we see them through our children.

Elementary school, middle school, high school, college. The job description of a parent is constantly changing as our children grow from infants to adults yet we never stop loving them with the intensity that we felt when they were helpless and we were the only people in the world who kept them safe, fed, loved and happy. (Although that summer before they leave for college they really do prepare you to look forward to a little less stress!)

 How do you go from being a manager to a consultant? Every parent knows someday the goal is to have your child be an independent free thinking responsible person who is going to leave you and go out on their own. That is what we all want for them.  We have to put our own will aside for the greater will and let them go.

As my children grow and become more independent, I stand by and watch with tears in my eyes and love in my heart and hope I did my job and they know that no matter how much life throws at them and how much things change, we will always be the stable foundation that they can build their own lives on.