when your child turns ten

If you are a big sentimental fool like me, you get- sentimental. You stuff mushrooms, and bake a cake, you make fancy pastry and clam chowder, you create totally starch based dinner just for him, you clean and tidy and prepare for guests. You buy balloons, even though he says he is too big for balloons.

You simply cannot believe that so much time has passed and that you have been allowed the care and feeding of another human being for so long.

I am not lamenting the passage of time, mind you.

I like time to pass.

I am happy to be done with babyhood, but I really like my child the way he is now.
He is old enough to be responsible for some self care, but not old enough to be jaded, most of the time.
He is an incredibly sweet little guy and I adore him, naturally.

He is also a really cool kid- everybody says so, not just me.

I don't know how he turned out so well, to tell you the truth.

We pretty much suck as parents.

We are sniveling, self indulgent, and bleak as hell a lot of the time.

We crave solitude, and quiet. We spend way too much time with our noses pressed into books, and not nearly enough time in the sunshine, but we have this really terrific son, so it goes.

This fact alone proves that life is not fair, and sometimes that is a really good thing.