FIGHTING THE FUNK

Last weekend I worked myself into a true funk after Sarah's (belated) birthday party ended.

It just struck me as the passing of an era. An era I have greatly enjoyed. 

She had been so excited beforehand about her Harry Potter theme for her party. (She has just started reading the books in the last two months and she hasn't yet completed the series of movies.) But when the party actually took place, Harry was all but forgotten. 

There was an entire bowl full of fun Harry Potter glasses and a stack of temporary tattoos in the style of his infamous zig-zag forehead scar. 

None of it was touched. 

(I guess at 13, your friends are too mature (haha!) for party favors.) 

Worse than that - boys were invited to the party. 

BOYS!!

When it was time to call everyone in for lunch, I found Sarah had climbed a tree in the front yard (Yay! So reassuringly like "the good old days"!) … except this time there was a boy with her. A non-brother boy.

I don't mean to imply that Sarah is now boy-crazy. She is not. (Thank you, Jesus!) It's just that these things strike me as ominous shadows of realities-yet-to-come. And the main problem with new things coming is that old things first must pass away. 

I'm noticing that these era changes are most difficult when they involve the oldest child or the youngest. Six months in, Melissa is still not recovered from sending Caleb off to college. She can hardly eat a taco without getting all wistful over how Caleb was able to eat 5 or 6 at a sitting, often before the rest of the family got seconds. (A fact that, at the time, none of us found nearly so endearing.)

So, the party just left me fighting the funk.

My memory often fails me now, but one moment at the end of what must have been an unusually harmonious night ten or eleven years ago (!!) sticks with me: Sarah was still a little one in diapers, just recently arrived at the really fun stage of toddlerhood, and Melissa and I had put her in her crib for the night and had now turned our attention to getting the older three kids to sleep. Samuel, four or five at the time, sat on his bed in his pajamas, fighting back tears. 

"What's wrong, Sammy?" we asked. 

His reply caught us totally off guard: "I'm sad because I don't want Sarah to grow up!"

I'm totally with you, dude. 

But there's no stopping it.

So goodbye, footy pajamas.   Goodbye, Lalaloopsy.   Goodbye, bedtime stories.

A birthday pic from the good old days ...

Hello, boy problems. Hello, driver's license. Hello, growing independence. 

I will do my best to embrace this new era, especially since I already know that this era, also, will too soon be "the good old days".