As quickly as you came, you leave. You leave. As though, just yesterday, I welcomed you into our lives, full of the hope you promised to bring – today I reflect on those promises fulfilled, so gratefully.
I began the year, thankful to have been able to enroll in Anatomy & Physiology I – and I end the year having successfully completed that, in addition to II and III, while maintaining my perfect GPA.
I began the year dreaming of completing these necessary prerequisites, in order to be able to apply to the nursing program – and I end the year having just received my acceptance letter.
I began the year with two in high school, one in middle school, and our two youngest still at home together – and I end the year with a high school graduate, a high school junior who also attends college, a high school freshman, a new kindergartner, and one single Sparrow still waiting for his turn to start the adventure (and several young adults, whom I also happen to love very much, seeking paths of their own).
Kids with first jobs; one experiencing a firing and the other gathering the nerve to give two weeks’ notice, and both of them gaining some understanding of the real world (one got re-hired somewhere else, I’ll let you guess which).
Last babies losing first baby teeth, braces coming off of another, and a total of six wisdom teeth coming out of two other mouths – all of this leaving sparkling Sparrow smiles every where I look.
The end of a two year prednisone journey for a little one as he enters remission for his Nephrotic Syndrome – and prayers that his (so they say) inevitable relapse never finds its way to his precious kidneys.
The beginning of a bilingual journey for a little one as his name was drawn 20th in a lottery for twenty spots in our local Spanish Immersion kindergarten – and our astonishment at the rate in which he is soaking up his new language.
New driver’s license, first new car, all-star games and MVP awards, new sports’ seasons and last sports’ seasons, sprained ligaments, broken hearts, gaining new friends and losing some old ones, first bank accounts and debit cards, first field trips chaperoned and reminiscent of all the other first field trips I was also blessed to chaperone, first new apartment, babies growing into funny preschoolers, kids growing into high schoolers, high schoolers moving into adulthood, and young adults moving outside state lines to begin new adventures.
Too many firsts and lasts to list, 2013. I can barely fathom the speed at which you came and went. Your farewell takes with it the last year I will ever have all of my own babies living under the roof of their childhoods. I am devastated, and excited, I am nostalgic, and proud, I am nervous, and anxious, and happy, and sad, I am grateful…and I am blessed.
And I can’t wait to meet 2014.
