yards and yards

remember the luxury of childhood?

• homemade lunches with love on the napkin and your name decoratively scrawling the boring brown lunch sack.  
• if you weren't sent on your merry way to learn your times tables with lunchables in tow, you were faced with the daunting decision: lunch option 1 or 2? this was crucial. it's against the law to switch later-- the lunch ladies need an accurate count-- so what you decide determines your lunch destiny. breakfast for lunch or spaghetti? ... both are prime options.
• recess. too few minutes on the clock of time granted to get out jitters and giggle and gossip and possibly chase boys or play 4 square or tetherball or attempt to swing high enough to defy gravity. 
• when you're sick your mom gives you hot chicken noodle soup, magic toast, and sometimes even ice cream.  she calls the school for you--you never need fear speaking more than one-syllable words to adults in authority positions because not only is that illegal, it's suicidal. 
• your mom also does your hair so you don't have to fuss with singeing curling irons and tricky elastics.
• she makes doctors appointments for you and cleans up your cut knee and puts a band-aide on with a kiss.  
• she makes sure you're on time to dance class, that you practice the piano, and even scrubs out the grass stains on your new jeans.  she is supermom.

growing up always seemed so glamorous as a child-- make-up and dating and college.  driving and dessert before dinner and, most alluring, no curfew.  the essence of independence.  the mirage of perfection.

i do these things; i enjoy these freedoms.  i even tie my own shoes.

but on occasion i run into a complication in the process of growing up.  i'm far from childhood days-- i have decisions that determine much more than lunch.  i know i am capable, of many things, but in the midst of my abilities, my weaknesses shout out my imperfections and responsibily crumbles my belief in my own self-sufficiency.

my mom still makes me magic toast and wraps her arms around me; she talks with me on the phone at 2 am and makes emergency cupcake visits. but there's only so much a mom can do.

if she's a good one, like mine, she let's you make mistakes and allows you to call the doctors and schedule appointments and manage money.  those are now my responsibility. along with tackling the mountain of laundry, waking up to my alarm, driving carefully, and making decisions that do determine destiny.  she offers advice, prayers,  counsel, resources, everything she has to offer.

but i need to be ready to grow up.  really.  not grow a couple millimeters. not grow a few centimeters. not even grow a dozen inches.  but yards.  yards and yards until the day i might slip on shoes of motherhood.
to begin, i will avenge responsibility, and let growing up come as it may.
the magnificence of childhood is far gone but i can offer that luxury in many many a yard to a little girl because i took the initiative to grow up.  today.