“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory”
-Dr. Suess
Nobody can understand this phrase better than a mother whose children are growing too fast just like mine. My daughter is growing up and getting smart and I don’t like it! I don’t like it because she is doing it way too early. She was a baby a few days ago. She was this little girl I put up in bed and bathe, but all of that is changing now. She is changing! I don’t want it to happen so soon. They told me she is special, that she has Down syndrome and she will take time but they were wrong!
I am not yet done with her baby years. I want the marathon running clock to stand still and let me soak all these moments. I am not yet ready for her to know that she can do it all, without her Mama!
I was happy when she was learning new things but now it is way more than I can take. All of a sudden, she wants to take a bath on her own and throws me out of the bathroom. She likes to get dressed herself, wear her shoes on her own, make her hair the way she likes. She is getting big and I am losing my little girl every day.
She wants to help me in the kitchen in making tea, omelette and everything else. She wants to go to the nearby shop to buy bread and butter all alone just like her brother and not just this, she also wants to go to the park, without me. The worst part is that she knows that she can be upset if I say ‘No’ to any of this.
This wasn’t supposed to happen this soon. She was just a baby a few days ago, a baby I could just cuddle, swirl, pick up and run. But she isn’t that baby anymore. Yes, she still likes the cuddles but that is that. Everything else has changed and Mama is getting so insecure!
Here is this one incident that I would like to share with all the mothers sitting on the edge trying to stop those little feet from getting big. I am sure you’d see your past, present or the future in it.
We got her a new bicycle a few days ago and she loves to ride it. And since she is still learning to ride, I have to be with her to make sure that she doesn’t fall off and hurt herself. Yesterday, I took her downstairs for cycling and a few other children of various ages followed the suit. The part worth noticing was that those children were alone, without their parents! A few were her age, a few younger and a few older than her. Beautiful children on their colourful bicycles were a treat to watch.
Now my little baby looks around and she could feel that I was obstructing her way to independence. My little girl could think that in order to be the part of the group, she would have to get rid of me. I could see her wanting to belong to the group that rode so beautifully and without a care about falling, with their great kinaesthetic movements and big leaps, she too wanted to be all that. I could see that she wanted to fly on that bike. The only trouble was me! because nobody else had a mama there and as soon as she saw herself as the only one with a chaperone, she wanted me to go back leaving her alone and that’s what the last nail did. She asked me to go back home. “Mama, go!”, “go home!” Wow! What a mixed feeling! I was more sad than happy that she doesn’t need me.
I kept standing and looking at her from a distance so she could enjoy the freedom and yet if she falls, I could just run and catch her before she gets hurt. I had so many thoughts in those few minutes where anybody who had said anything about her not being independent replayed in my mind and I wanted to show them all, that there goes my little baby who is seeking out the independence from me, from the world and from the deep prejudiced hearts and no matter whether we allow or not, she is going to do whatever it takes to be the girl she wants to be. And I know I am worried and I am scared to let go of that hand and those tiny little fingers but I know she can do it all.
She is going to be 8 and I can only imagine how it will be when she turns 10-12 or even 15. This girl surely knows what she wants and she would not stop! But what does Mama want? Mama wants her to always be the little girl she is today. The little girl who runs to her arms when she comes back from the school and the little girl whose giggle is like the wind chimes. My girl is ready but Mama will never be!
Image source: pinterest.com
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