summer arrives

It's been a while since I've checked in here, and most of it is to be explained by my spring workload. With the deadline met, I feel as though I've been set free once again, to romp and play. Being a stay-at-home, work-from-home mom is an interesting intersection of worlds. I rarely speak about my work, and I won't go into the details of what it is I actually do, but I do want to pause to reflect on how it impacts my life. My job has deadlines four times a year, and there is a great deal of seasonality to its rhythms. Spring is about 3 times busier than the rest of year, and it can be challenging to reorganize my daily life patterns for a brief but intense 4 month period.
Last year at this time Oona was a newborn, and slept on my back while I worked at the computer. This year, she is a scampering, daredevil rascal, with great passion and enthusiasm in her new-found mobility. And yet, our connection is still so very strong, and she likes and needs to check in with mama with great regularity. So it was a rather significant shock for both of us to learn that there were times when I couldn't be available. We were both unprepared for entering the world of negotiation for time and space, and there were many tears shed by both of us - from frustration, fear, and sheer desperation. But after several intense weeks, Oona decided she was tired of feeling miserable, and has struck out on her own in many ways.
I've gotten a first taste of the long process of watching my little girl go out into the world on her own. I find that it is pretty much what so many others have written before: a sweet sentimental joy that tugs hard at my heart and floods me with gratitude - for having the opportunity to observe the tiny details of a life growing and stretching and reaching for experiences, creating tendrils of patterns so exquisite, so particular to this one being, that I am out of breath and tingling all over. Yes, such gratitude.
My feeling about childhood and parenthood is that if it works out well, your child will leave you forever for her own life. There will of course, hopefully, be dinners and holidays and conversations and closeness, but mostly, I hope that Oona finds her own fullness of days. When she leaves our home, I hope it is to a home made of her own dreams. And when that time comes, slowly and circuitously, I will bask in the delight of Timon and I's life together, likely sitting outside with good wine and fresh strawberries, and our continually interesting conversations.