Upon hearing this, those of you who know me might be thinking, “are you mental and/or unwell?” It’s a fair question.

As you may have gleaned by now, I’m not a touchy-feely kind of gal. I might cry at Coke commercials (it’s happened, and don’t get me started on the ones for St. Jude’s hospital), but I didn’t cry at my wedding or on either of my kids’ first days of school, and I certainly didn’t cry when I gave birth (I didn’t even know that was something people did. Apparently it is). Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to meet the beings who caused me to gain more than a third of my fighting weight and who had occupied — one more aggressively and perhaps angrily than the other – the space formerly known as my stomach (womb, whatever). But cry? No. I am not sappy that particular way.

Coupled with this un-sappiness is the fact that as some of you also know/have read, I don’t like babies or young children all that much. I thought I would like kids more after I had my own. I do not. Most of them are annoying. Almost from birth, I couldn’t wait till my kids turned five. That seemed like the golden age, the time when things would a-change. And I was right, they did, and all for the better.

Before then, in the pre-five years (I had a total of eight of them. Nine if you factor in that my son was actually 6 before anything was remotely “golden” with him), people doled out their similarly-themed observances at random moments. For example, during my kids’ public meltdowns or as I sat looking like I might poke my own eyes from boredom at the playground, parents of older children would (unsolicited) tell me things like “Cherish every moment, it goes faster than you think.” One person actually said this to me in the waiting room of my pediatrician’s office as I held the crying, alien form that was my 1 week-old daughter. My life had been so fully uprooted at that point that my understanding of the English language was mostly limited to yes/no/I have no idea, and I barely comprehended what, exactly, had happened to me (see: When filling out the forms registering my kid with the pediatrician’s office,  I wrote my mom’s name under “mother”). Even in that coma-like state, the one thing I did know was that nothing felt “fast.” But I nodded and smiled as if I got it.

The other line people threw at me  was “You’ll miss this phase when it’s over.” Well, no. YOU might have. I did not. I did not/have not missed (to name a few): The “why” phase (Here’s why: Because); Pointing at every object I passed and naming it (to increase their vocabulary!); Referring to myself in the third person (i.e. “let mommy do that” because allegedly babies/toddlers don’t understand pronouns. You know what? I bet those mofos do); Participating – with my hands, voice and body – in some sort of “wheels on the bus” rendition at “mommy and me;” The poop-up-back diaper changes; Two kids screaming for my attention at once….I didn’t cherish those moments and I don’t regret that I didn’t. They sucked and I am glad I can talk about them in the past tense.

But now something is happening. Not only am I mostly loving these so-called golden years with both my kids, but my older one is about to turn 10, is on the brink of tweendom. That means that we have less time with her ahead of us than behind. It means that only one more Presidential cycle will pass before she can vote. It means that those years I rushed through are truly in the past, and even the phase after that is coming to a close.

While her brother still fits comfortably, perfectly in my lap, she does not.  His hands feels small in mine – hers…well, I don’t know because we don’t hold hands very much anymore.  I have accidentally worn her socks. She knows songs I don’t know. She picks up on subtleties. We crack up together in a similar way that I do with girlfriends. It is quite amazing, and nothing at all like years 0-5 ore even 5-9.

Other things are also happening. She is fine with affection at home, but turns her head when I go to kiss her goodbye in front of school. She is embarrassed when I talk (nicely – not in my taking on the elderly way!) to strangers. She cringes at the thought of what we, her earnest parents, might do in public that will be unacceptable (luckily she finds her father far more mortifying than she finds me. Told you I was cooler, husband).  None of this makes me cry – I relish it. It’s part of what I’ve been waiting for.

So what happened today? Well, today is the first of two performances of the 4th grade play. A 75 minute production where the kids have memorized their lines, cues, scenes and several songs. My kid and her classmates have  been working all year toward this day. It is A Big Deal in her grade, among her friends, at her school.

On our way in this morning, she was nervous and excited. When we arrived 15 minutes early, she asked me to come into the building with her – for the first time in two years. She was a little bit of a jittery mess. But then…then she saw some friends. And they were nervous and excited too. They all hugged each other, chattering away about the play, and she turned to me, smiled, and said, “It’s okay, I don’t need you.” And then she ran up the steps to school and didn’t look back.

That, my friends, made me cry. Not because it shouldn’t have happened, but because it should have, because it did.