The Next Forty Years

Two weeks ago I turned 40. For-tee. As in years old. And as you'd expect it made me pause for a moment.

I'll tell you there were times as a young mother that I thought my life would be full of runny noses and messy diapers forever, that I'd never ever again be able to take a shower without someone banging on the door, screaming, "MOM!" or get an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep or have a dinner where I wasn't cutting up someone's meat. I remember days where I'd come home from church swearing I'd never set foot inside the chapel again after the trauma of battling four kids through a sermon or where all I could think about from four o'clock on were the minutes until Andrew got home from work.

Now don't get me wrong--those days weren't horrible or regrettable and I'm grateful for every minute (even the ones that are best forgotten when I may not have been in top form) but I remember so clearly how those years of having small children with big needs stretched on endlessly before me and how I couldn't see that my life would ever be any different. I'd never again be able to wear dry-clean only clothing and I'd always have to carry a purse equipped with disposable diapers.

I was never one of those women who gloried in having small children around. I've known (and admired) women who have a dozen kids, take in foster children, then find time to run a daycare on the side but that's never been me. I've always preferred adult conversation to those where I'm trying to guess what the screaming means.

Please don't misunderstand. I love children--my children--and enjoyed having little arms around my neck and hearing the cute things they'd say but once they got old enough to tie their own shoes and take their own bathroom breaks I was thrilled. I remember older friends telling me, "Enjoy this time because it's the best time of your life" and I'd look at them as if they were insane. Insane. How could croup and colic be the best time of my life? Explain to me that because if it were the best I could expect then my future looked pretty darn bleak.

But it's funny how time has a way of going on with or without you and here I am, realizing that my period of having small children around was only a short ten years of my life, a mere one quarter of my time so far. Sometimes I think I'll be in tough times forever but life does, eventually, change and it moves on to new phases. You break up with your boyfriend and swear that you'll never love again but somehow it seems to pass. You get the flu and you'll never be healthy but one day you'll jump out of bed and feel ready for the day. Or maybe it's been raining so long you've forgotten what the sun looks like and you just know it'll rain forever but at some point you see the sun peaking through the curtains again.

While I don't think I'd ever go back to those years of physical exhaustion I do kind of treasure them in a strange way. It's as if the kids and I went through it all together and we all made it through none the worse for wear and it's made me love them all the more for those tough days. I never thought I'd say it but I am dreading the time when they finally leave home and the house is empty and the dinner table is quiet. On this side of things the accidents and spills are so much more funny and those years of young motherhood have helped me to understand that as life will always have those tough spells maybe other things I'll have to endure will also have happy endings.

Life will always have those bad days and bad times where you swear the rain will last forever but it won't. Even if there is tragedy time has a way of moving on and the weather will--eventually--change and you'll be left with the fuzzy memories of how crazy things used to be. And, magically, instead of remembering the heartache or hard times there's just a quiet satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that some how you made it through, that you were strong enough to endure--and that's feeling is worth more than a mountain of messy diapers.

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