Now We Are Six

So, the thing is… now we are six.

I was standing in the paint store this week (don’t even get me started. I haven’t sent out a column in months because I’ve been painting my dining room. Four times.) and while I was waiting for David the Wondrous Paint Guy to mix up some paint for me, I got into a conversation with a woman who was also waiting. MY children were running around the store like it was a racetrack and I was embarrassed and hissing at them in that just-wait-until-we-get-home, there-will-be-no television-for-the-rest-of-your-life kind of way. Her children were lounging about, trying out their newly changed voices and trying to fold their gangly selves small enough to fit on barstools at the counter. She was laughing at Jane (3) and as she was leaving, she said, “My oldest is fifteen and I KNOW I just brought him home from the hospital. Enjoy this time with your little ones. It goes so fast.”

It seems like ever since I first became a mother, my more experienced mom friends have said the same thing. “Enjoy this time because it goes so fast.” I think I finally understand what that means. Today is my daughter Ana’s sixth birthday.

I just can’t see how that happened! Six years gone by –whoosh! Doesn’t six just seem like such a big birthday? And everything is changing so fast. In the last month, Ana has lost her first two teeth. The first one came out during the night some time and she discovered the loss in the morning. It was still in her bed and we brought it downstairs and put it in a Ziploc bag so she could take it to school to show her teacher. True to her “collector” self, she wanted to keep the first tooth and NOT give it to the Tooth Fairy. (Suddenly I understand why the Tooth Fairy was invented.) She wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy saying if the Tooth Fairy didn't want to pay her, that was okay, but Ana still would rather keep the tooth. So, the Tooth Fairy left her a dollar. And the next night, Ana wrote ANOTHER letter to the Tooth Fairy thanking her for the tooth AND the money and telling her that next time, she'd actually leave the tooth. And then there was a PS that said, "The money is for you." And she left $1.27. I said, “Did you mean to leave the Tooth Fairy more than she gave you?” “Yes,” said Ana. “I thought maybe she could use the money.”

It’s weird though, because *I* wanted to keep that tooth as a talisman of time passing. It just seems like I just sent out that note to my family about her first tooth appearing (five months) and there it is now, in my hand. Ana looks like such a big girl –she really looks completely different with that snaggle-toothed smile.

And then, last Friday, she had to give a presentation at school. She stood in front of her classmates and their parents, shoulders back confidently, and spoke in clear tones as she detailed the planets in her diorama. My husband and I were both proud and a bit wistful at what a big girl she is now. I said later that I was glad to see Ana in a group of her peers and to know that her social skills are completely normal. “Yeah, and she was amazing doing that presentation,” he said. “She just seemed so… PROFESSIONAL.” And that’s it exactly: she’s a professional six-year-old. I just don’t know when that happened.

This month, too, Jane suddenly developed “morning breath.” I used to love to wake her up and to bury my nose in her little neck and smell that baby smell –sort of a cross between banana bread and crayons. It’s gone, just like it left with Ana at about the same age. I enjoyed that baby smell— oh, gosh! You just can’t imagine how much. But it’s gone and I’m probably the only one who will mourn its passing.

I’m sure none of this wistful bittersweet has anything to do with the fact I had a birthday myself recently and turned 39. Ahem.

No, seriously, I’m really okay with that. It’s just that I’m suddenly so aware of the passage of time. Suddenly, there it is--the big four-oh, (literally) staring me in the face. Oddly enough, I'm not near as mental about this decade change as I was when I turned 29 and had thirty staring me in the face. After spending almost a year snarling at anyone who reminded me, I called my mother the day before my birthday to leave a message "Just in case you want to talk to the YOUNGEST of your children on the very LAST day of her TWENTIES." Nothing like spreading the misery around by reminding everyone that we are all getting that much closer to the Big Sleep. (My mother responded with the good grace that aging brings out in SOME people.)

There’s the irony, though: just when I become comfortable in my skin, I have to rise up and hit some new milestone. The old life can’t continue on for years and years because we are not built for complacency, we humans. That’s probably the best thing about being a parent –I am FORCED to change and adapt as my children grow and change. *I* may not be ready for Ana to ride her bike in the street but SHE sure is. (So is Jane, for that matter, but we’ll leave that for a future column all about the effects of adrenalin on the average mother.)

I don’t know, everything is happening right on schedule and it’s not like time is a train rushing past me. But it’s insistent and relentless, this tiny beating of butterfly wings that takes the childhood of my children from me.

Happy Birthday, Ana Katherine. It’s going to be a fabulous year of visits from the tooth-fairy and birthday parties and summer days spent riding your bike in the street. If I could give you anything, I would give you the ability to notice the casual joy of these days. You have to enjoy them now.

Because they go so fast.

When I was one I'd just begun,

When I was two I was nearly new,

When I was three I was hardly me,

When I was four I was not much more,

When I was five I was barely alive,

But now I am six! As clever as clever!

And I think I'll stay six now for ever and ever!

--A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six

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Barbara Cooper is the mother of Ana (6!) and Hurricane Jane (3). She lives in Austin, Texas and she has finally managed to get all the paint out of her hair.