Category Archives: lovely love my family

On Thalia’s 9th birthday, the biggest parenting cliche in the world.

I swore I would never be the parent who gazes at other parents holding newborns or wrestling toddlers into clip-on cafe booster seats and saying to them, it goes so fast.

But I am. I am that person. Feel free to hate me. I hate myself for it.

 

2005

Of course when I approach the poor unsuspecting parents, I have to caveat it by confessing to them how much I want to slap myself for saying it at all, especially after years of swearing I wouldn’t, because yeah, duh, of course it goes fast and you should treasure these years and yep, the time with your babies are so precious and fleeting and blah blah blah slow news day, Liz?

Meanwhile back when other moms would suggest the same annoying cliche to me, all I could think at the time was that I was happy for a little “it goes fast” in my life, what with the diaper explosions and the front carriers that killed my back and the leaky sippy cups that ruined more than a few handbags.

And yet, here she is. Here we are.

Today Thalia that little girl who was born smiling, turns nine.

Today, nine years ago, she made me a mother. More than that, she made me a mother I didn’t know that I would ever be.

Each July 6 since then there have been celebrations. Presents. Cake. Sometimes fireworks. The one thing that’s different this year, is that she is with her father.

I don’t get to wake her, cuddle up in our nightgowns together in bed, stroke her head, open some cards,  and retell the story (she still lets me tell it without complaint) of my water breaking at my desk, the doula who left mid-labor, and the bumpy 3AM ride up the FDR drive with my contractions unmercifully coinciding with every pothole we hit. Continue reading

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