The Po Show

Apropos of My Last Post

It seems that puberty marches on for others of Matthew's cohort as well, and some have already reached the finish line. Not surprisingly, a girl. The girl whose mother (one of my most cherished friends in the world) so nicely told me last summer, "She has bigger breasts than you!" So it should not be surprising to hear that that this sweet, beautiful girl has "become a woman," as they used to say in those outdated films they made us watch in elementary school. The one I got shown in fifth grade, and the accompanying pamphlet they gave us (courtesy of Kimberly Clark), were so old that they only talked about sanitary pads, not tampons.

Anyway, I'm sitting here with tears running down my face. It's not just that I'm feeling old and Auntie-ish, that I'm incredulous that the first girl of the group has started menstruating (other people's children grow up SO FAST. I mean, your own children grow up ridiculously fast, but I swear I turn around and other people's children have grown faster than seems humanly possible). I'm just thinking about those days when they were all babies and toddlers, and it feels like this glowing, magical time. This is fairly insane on my part, since if I really remember it correctly it was a time of utter exhaustion, when Matthew never slept two hours in a row, when he cried incessantly, when I was constantly apologizing to other moms whose kids he whacked.

But I swear, in so many ways, it was the best time of my life. I think about walking around Huntington Gardens, or hanging out on the third floor at Westside Pavillion, with my friends and their babies, all of us pushing our strollers (though usually I was carrying Matthew in one arm and pushing the stroller with my other hand--oh to have three hands back then!!), and my eyes fill up again, because I'd love to go back then, just for a day.

It was the time before, when Matthew was this gorgeous smiley baby who hugged and kissed all the other babies, who were his friends, before he even knew what that meant. It was before the world narrowed, before I knew what was coming. It was before I found out. And that was a long, prepubescent, time ago.