18 Years of Parenting

She didn't come with a set of instructions. We just sort of muddled through, picking up the details we needed to know along the way, understanding that we would make mistakes and need forgiving.

She was my first close-encounter with my very own kind of miracle. The fact of her existence, evidence of my creative power, took my breath away. Then came the mind-boggling comprehension that she was mine, yet not mine at all.

I began to understand, quite early, how quickly this was all going to happen. The years rolling one right onto another, how effortlessly she grew from a baby to one who toddles to one who speaks and dreams and continues to alter the course of our daily rituals. I'd never been more content to simply observe, to drop everything I was and become for someone else, for however long she needed me, and then I would become again.

So here we are on the first day of year 18, with all its legal significance. She can vote. She can sign her own health forms. She can serve on a jury. She can maintain her finances privately if she so desires. And while I have no worries that she is capable, I have had moments of anxiety. Have I prepared her? Was there something big and profound I was suppose to have passed along by now that maybe I have forgotten?

Yet, it is a day like any other. A day we will continue to evolve in our relationship, she and I. A day we will continue to celebrate, both individually and together. A day when we will look back on where we've been, and look forward to all there is still before us.

Today I have been a mother for 18 years.

She continues to amaze me.