A couple of days ago I drove north to the city where my son and his family live. He and his wife have three daughters, and the oldest, Chelsea, just graduated high school. It is, for me, a most bittersweet time, as I’m sure it is for Mom and Dad.
When Chelsea was little, they came home to visit almost every weekend. I couldn’t wait for them to arrive because I knew that, while I would be giving them a much needed break from parenting, Chelsea would be filling my heart with irreplacable memories. She was always as happy to see me as I was to see her. I was the first person to take her to see a movie – ever. We went to see The Lion King at a theater. She was enthralled. Two days after her high school graduation, I took my whole family, all ten of us, to see a traveling performance straight off Broadway of The Lion King on stage. Talk about a full circle moment. I caught glimpses of her face during the performance that reminded me so much of that time we spent together at the movies. Time so well spent and so fleeting.
She learned to walk when she was seven months old. By the time she was nine months old, she was running. And I mean, running, like an older child, with knees churning and her elbows flying. No stiff-legged, side-to-side steps for my baby girl. Nope.
Her mother has a most beautiful voice, so all the girls have been brought up listening to music. They all have really remarkable voices and perfect pitch. When she got a little older, Chelsea and I would dance. She would hear me put on some music, she’d come flying, hold out her hands and step up on my shoes. And that’s how we danced. Holding hands with her feet on top of mine. She would look up at me with an expression of such joy that the memory of her face still hurts my heart. Precious memories. Fleeting time.
So back to the reason for the visit a couple of days ago. Lunch and shopping with the girls. My eighteen-year old Chelsea, my thirteen-year old Logan, and my twelve-year old Leslie. OMG. Did we have fun? Lord, yes.
We shopped for new shoes… and they had to be Tom’s. If you don’t already know, that’s the shoe company that GIVES a new pair of shoes to a child in a needy country for every pair it sells. The girls were insistent that would be the brand, and it made me proud, knowing that even when they were getting treated, they were thinking of others.
After the shoes, we went to lunch. Their Mama works in the same city and met us at the restaurant. Getting to spend that short time with the woman I call my other daughter was the best. Later, after she left us, we hit yet another store, and I stood, watching and listening to the sisters chatter as they sifted through a store full of teen clothing. The best part was listening to their comments to each other, recommending colors that would look best with their sisters hair or skin. No criticisms, no teasing remarks about body shape or sizes. Just sisters, being sisters, and knowing that this very special time they were spending together was soon coming to an end. By fall, Chelsea will be out of the house and in college, and even though she will often visit, it will never be the same.
I’d gone through the same thing with my son, their father, once upon a time, and it was again, a most bittersweet time to be witnessing.
But my full circle moment came when we had finished our time together and we were heading home, Chelsea took me past the house she plans to live in with two of her girlfriends as she attends her local college. I thought the old neighborhood looked familiar, but when she told me the name of the street, for a moment, I couldn’t speak.
Call it fate. Call it kismet. Call it a passing the torch moment – but as fate would have it, she tells me she is going to be living on the same street her father lived on when he was in college there over twenty years earlier, and only six houses up from the very house in which he’d lived.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to relate what I was feeling. All I knew was that I was experiencing a true, full circle moment. It was time for the torch to be passed to the next generation.
I don’t know how long I’m going to be around to witness my granddaughters journeys, but I know that a part of me will live on forever through them and their dreams.
