weanings

Tomorrow morning I will nurse my 2.5 year old for the last time. Im trying to prepare myself to be in the moment, rather than mostly asleep, early in the morning. I know and have experienced over and over again, that a child’s “lasts” generally pass unnoticed, until you suddenly look around days later, and think, huh, i guess she’s all done with THAT. So this time, this one little moment, I plan to show up. To be there, and feel it, and say goodbye to the closeness of a soft cheek nestled into me, sleepy eyes, calmed by the ritual nursing. I usually DON’T want to be there and feel the last anything, because it hurts, and pain is something I tend to avoid. 

The fact that this coming morning is also the morning where I fly with my teenager on a mother daughter trip, a 3 day spell of togetherness, cementing the fact that it is to her that I say goodbye as well - she leaves, moving out, just 13 days from now. This trip is my last fleeting moment, my grabbing of the experience of having my gorgeous, strong, gloriously free firstborn living in my home, a permanent part of my life, until she suddenly wont be anymore, 13 days from now. The thing she calls “home” will now be the thing she makes plans to visit. So our whirlwind trip will be just that, a way to settle into the utterly inescapable fact of yet another last, to savor it, to sense it in a way that I cannot at home surrounded by the others, to mourn it, and let myself move ahead. 

How perfectly perfect that this trip is the impetus for that weaning. My oldest and my youngest, conspiring to keep me awake and aware of how fragile and blindingly fast all of this is. No matter how much I’d rather turn away and not look at the blindingly bright reality set before me, this time I choose to be present with it. I’m thinking (hoping) that if I let myself really experience these lasts, with all their glory and loss, maybe it will be easier to open up to the excitement that the next stages will bring - potty training? the adventures of an adult child? who knows what all lies ahead??