The Middle Place

My Halle girl is in the middle place.  She has one foot in childhood and the other in young adulthood.  I watch her shift her weight from one to the other often.

Just last night she said out of the blue "Can I drive the car?"  I was a little shocked, but looking around the big, empty parking lot I thought "Why not?"  So she did.  And even though she never actually pushed on the gas pedal, and we drifted through the parking lot going all of 6 mph, she did it.  I looked over at her and was in awe of her.  She has the body of an adult.  6 feet tall and gorgeous.  Yet, as soon as she re-parked and turned the key off, she looked at me and excitedly said "Mommy will you swing with me?!"  And we did.

I often check on my kids one last time before I go to sleep for the night.  Some nights her scriptures sit beside the bed, her Personal Progress book marking the place she left off.  Some nights her face is scrunched into the folds of her Ernie who is threadbare and falling completely apart. She's loved him since she was 13 months old and he's been through a lot.  I suggested giving him one last bath in the sink and then putting him away, and she just about died.  You would have thought I suggested making her cat into stew.

She is learning how to solve her own problems, handle all of her own responsibilities (4.0 gpa) and taking loving care of every animal that resides in our home.  And yet, I find her playing school with Jack, watching Nick Jr, and recording homemade commercials on the IPad.  I watch her play basketball with sweaty determination on her face, listen to her sing Taylor Swift in the backseat and send her off to dances all dressed up.

And if you want the honest to goodness truth....it's killing me.  Because while she is floating in her middle place, so am I.

I was the mother to little kids.  I did playgroups, I was room mother in their classrooms, volunteer on the fieldtrips.  I made after school snacks, and fancy birthday parties.  I taught them how to do everything I was doing, and I made them laugh by dancing and singing in the kitchen.  My time as mother to little kids is coming to an end.  Their giggles will be replaced by eye rolls.  Their friends, who I know and love (and their friends mothers too!) will soon be just names I hear about after school.  Since I won't be in their classrooms, I won't meet and learn these friends by face and name.  They don't need me to open fruit snacks, or make Kool Aid.  Halle makes her own snacks, and usually Jack's too.

I am not sure how to be the mother to young adults.  But I have a sneaky suspicion I'll figure it out soon.  

Still, I lay in be at night and wonder how I went from this:

 To this: