Just A Glimpse...

It's one of those hot summer days that just begs for pool time. Unfortunately, neither girls are swimmers yet, and we haven't a local pool wherein to teach them. Consequently, Pool Time around here means dragging out the plastic one and filling it up.

It's funny to look at them in it right now, mentally comparing them to their younger selves. Today when they scoot down the slide, the resulting splash looks like it could empty out the entire pool. It almost does. Today their nearly 7 year old bodies take up the majority of the space; a far cry from looking like small fish in a big pond. When they were younger we would fill the pool up with an assortment of tub toys and play food from their kitchen set, but today I don't think there's really any room for that. They seem to be content playing Kick The Water Out Of The Pool, a staggeringly easy task for two so tall as they.

Looking at them in the bathing suits, I feel the reality of their growth like a slap in the face. Gone are the chubby thighs and pudgy bellies of toddler hood, replaced by long torsos and even longer legs of looming adolescence and womanhood. That word, "womanhood" when applied to my daughters feels like sandpaper across my tongue; abrasive, sudden, and not completely welcome. They're my babies. Even still,I know the end result of all this parenting is to have 2 beautiful women, mothers, and friends. Our gift to humanity.

It's just that it's going so fast. Too fast. Time is slipping by and I feel helpless to stop it, doing my best to hold up a hand and require a hug and a cuddle every now and again. Stopping them as they go along their merry way, growing up before my eyes, to remember it's okay to want to be with Mommy and to need me. I can still fix the boo boos, still soothe an injured heart. I can still be the one they turn to for a smile, encouragement, a hug.

Most of the time I insist on seeing them through the hazy gleam of the past; still little girls, still trying to outgrow each other in a neck and neck race that never ends. But in times like these, days when I can see them for what they are, I see how fuzzy the edges of the past truly are. They are traveling over the gap between Big Kid and Tween; getting ready to knock on the door of Teenager, and then Woman.

Time, it stops for no one. The only thing to do is to get acquainted with the present and to plant my feet firmly in the now. As for these two precious girls,  I have the honor of knowing where they've come from, the privilege of seeing who they're working on being now, and the excitement of watching them become the women they'll be.

I count my blessings as very many, indeed.