Happy, Happy Birthday...Baby

On the East Coast, my daughter is now 6 and I have just over an hour until she turns 6 here on the Pacific Coast.

It is so cliché, but my how time flies.

This song from Mamma Mia makes me so mindful of it all, but it also makes me CRY CRY CRY...



And this one my dear friend played for me a few years ago, after her mother played it for her, and I still can't get through it without sobbing. Although I'm not a huge country fan, Martina McBride sings it so beautifully.



My firstborn and I had a little ritual tonight to say goodbye to 5. We had our last snuggle while she was 5, our last goodnight kiss and then a last 5 photo. Then we talked about how 5 will always be a part of her and that it isn’t really goodbye 5…just hello 6.

Less than a decade ago, I was such a different person. The rapid aging of my firstborn continually reminds me of how little time I have to get it right.

Not sure what “it” is, but I do have a constant yearning to get “it” right.

I remain in awe of the way the birth of this child transformed me. I was a feminist. Now I’m a new kind of feminist. I never believed I could stay home with children (How boring! How mindless!), and I never considered homeschooling (What wackos!), but now I spend the majority of my time finding ways to do both.

When I left medicine (and when medicine, in turn, left me), I felt like I’d go back. Medicine seemed the perfect combination of care giving and intellectualizing. But it is not that at all. While it is another topic, I know that what I do now is so much more important than what I thought I’d do then.

By virtue of my checkered past, many of my friends are physicians. Lately, by virtue of our age, many of those same friends are having children. They bear them while full of guilt for leaving their colleagues when they take blunted maternity leaves. They enjoy their babies a precious 6 weeks or 12 weeks or even 4 weeks before handing them off to spend much of their waking hours cared for by someone else (in the best cases, a relative) and it’s really hard. It’s heartbreaking.

As my daughter turns 6, I’m even more grateful that I have been so blessed to be able to provide for our family in such creative ways.

A few friends have given me such deep perspectives on life and the value of these children I’ve chosen to have, as have the children, of course. Really, there is nothing more important than raising them, nothing more precious than these moments that I am fortunate enough to share with them.

My daughter has taught me so much in her 6 short years. She truly has transformed me. As she grows, I miss every person I lose along the way. I will never hold that newborn again. I will never again watch her learn to walk. I will never again have to help her remember her ABCs. That baby is gone and if I think about it too much, it makes me profoundly sad.

Yet, I’m so excited to see who she is becoming. It’s hard to stay sad when there is so much to look forward to.

And each moment gone reminds me of how important it is to cherish every second...every silly tantrum, every funky desire, the 100,000th step...everything. These will be the stories we will share. This is the creation of our family history and our individual life histories. These moments -- each one of them -- create the person she will be regardless of which hat she eventually chooses to wear.

I asked her how the last 5 years have been and she said, “Really happy!”

I hope she always feels that way about her life.

I’m grateful for each moment of every day with her.

Happy birthday, Baby.