I Want My Baby Back (Baby Back, Baby Back)

(Please tell me you read that title in the style of the "Chili's baby back ribs" jingle, because that was totally the point. Ahem.)

It truly is the weirdest thing, how the tables turn when your kids get older.

When I started this blog back in 2009 (yes, I'm a blogging dinosaur), I was just desperate to reach out to other moms and find someone in my same boat. And that boat was no luxury yacht — it was more like a rickety canoe, springing random leaks and always under threat of capsizing. "Mommy" had become my entire identity. I couldn't pee alone. Something was always a mess. Someone always needed me. I wanted nothing more than some time by myself, some silence in which to clear my thoughts, some space to remember who I was outside of somebody's mom.

... And then? I got all that. And it makes me want to cry.

I know it's a total cliché, but as long and arduous (and sometimes downright torturous) as those years felt, it seems like I blinked and they were behind me. Now I have three teenagers and and almost-teenager, and they have these independent lives — school, jobs, friends, girlfriends, extracurriculars — that mean they're gone more often than they're home these days. 

So here I am again, searching for moms in my same boat, but for a different reason this time. I want to know: has your older kids' independence made you a freaking basket case, or am I just a ridiculous sap who needs to get over it?!

I swear I'm literally on the verge of tears as I type this, just thinking about how my babies are gone now, and how I wish I could have just one day to redo. Just one day to revel in my babies still being babies – to bathe them, to tuck them in and read stories and sing songs and smell their baby shampoo as their silky little heads nestle against my arms, to realize that it all really does go so fast. I was not in a place to do that when they were little. I was so overwhelmed and just in survival mode during those years. I had no room to really take it in. Little did I know, though, that the things that caused me such anguish when my kids were little are the very things I'd miss so much when they were gone.

Don't get me wrong; I actually love having teenagers. I marvel at their separate and distinct personalities and their interests and their talents, and I'm so proud of the young men they're becoming (okay, except for the fact that they still sprinkle on the toilet seat despite literal YEARS of me pestering them about it). It's not that I don't enjoy this time in their lives.

But.

Everything I enjoy about this is almost overshadowed by this sense of ... I don't know, grief? ... that hangs over me like some sort of looming cloud. I realize now how quickly time flies, and I'm grasping onto every moment that I can, trying to make up for everything I took for granted during their early childhood — but now those moments are much fewer and further between. They come home from school and are here for, like, an hour or less before they head off to work or band practice or football practice. Then it's, "Mom, can I go to (insert location here) with my friends after (work, band practice, football)?" I see them briefly as they stop to inhale the contents of our refrigerator like a swarm of locusts, and then they're leaving again. 

And that's not all. When they were little, I could tell you every tiny thing about each one of them. When they were upset or hurt, I was the first and only person they came to. These days, I don't even know them as intimately as I used to because they're teenagers and they want privacy, and I respect that, but ugh. I no longer know every little thing that goes on in their lives, and it feels so strange, after years spent being hyper-aware of every detail of their day-to-day lives, right down to what color underwear they had on. 

I was once the absolute center of their universe. And now it's like I'm just ... orbiting aimlessly somewhere like some kind of rusty old satellite. I know this is how it supposed to be; heaven forbid I raise a bunch of men who can't function without their mama (because, ew). But I had no idea how hard it would be to let go, no matter how gradually. 

If I think about it, I got everything I wished for back when they were babies. I can sit on the toilet by myself until my legs fall asleep if I want (not that I do — that's my husband's department — but I could). More often than not, I can sit in complete silence. I'm able to just leave the house, period, without stuffing tiny feet into shoes and putting coats on and buckling everyone into their respective car seats. I can go get a manicure when I want! Read a book uninterrupted! Tell them I'm not making dinner and they can fend for themselves! If you had told me this in 2009, it would have sounded like absolute heaven. And it is ... but also, it isn't.

If you know, you know.