Mom: My baby is graduating high school and I can't wait. Don't wish yours stay small

Laura Trujillo
Updated

This piece was originally published in a Facebook post and is republished with the author's permission. Her son, Theo, graduated May 23.

Don't hope babies stay small. Mine's graduating high school and I can't wait.

And honestly, I didn’t blink and it was over. To all the moms who say they turned around and their babies grew up, who ask where the time went, who wonder how this kid could be graduating because wasn’t he just a toddler? I can tell you.

I felt them, those moments. I lived them, enjoyed them, fought them, laughed through them, worried, smiled, cried both happy and sad. I marveled at this once-tiny human.

Some days flew by; some nights were 12 years long.

They were spent willing him to sleep, so much so that I fell asleep first and woke to a smiling baby pulling at my eyelids; washing clothes in a special detergent; cutting grapes in half; worrying if we had chosen the right preschool.

'Every stage has its wonders'

They were spent marveling at the way his first laugh made me laugh; being in complete awe when he toddled in to answer math questions for his older brother; quietly or loudly cheering when he ran up the soccer field; listening when he went off to kindergarten and seemingly had this other life we got to know about, but not be a part of; watching him get lost in a book.

We lived them together.

Every stage had its wonders, and the next brought more. I wasn’t one to wish the infant stage would stay, or that he could be a toddler forever, or whatever wonderful moment where we lived. Because the next always brought something more: more interesting, more curious, more adventurous, more silly, more everything. Different.

I don't wish for it back, though

We can romanticize childhood and the past into a blur if we want. And yes, I can remember the day he was born as if it were yesterday; the day he got his orange cast after a branch broke on the tree he climbed; the day I watched him first hold his sister when she was upset. Memory and our brains are weird like that, time and space meld together and it was yesterday or 18 years ago. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but if you had given me a few extra hours of sleep in 2001 when he wouldn’t fall asleep, or in 2017 when he still wasn’t home at 4 a.m. and I wasn’t sure if he was dead or just forgot to call, I would have taken it.

And if I could inhale the top of his baby head after a bath one more time, or feel the way he snuggled and curled into me when he had a fever, I would take it. But only briefly.

I don’t wish for it back. I take all of it with me, with us. I love who he has grown into, become, is. And I am incredibly lucky to have been a part. I hope I feel every moment of this – graduation, life, whatever it will feel like, be.

And I can’t wait for what’s next.

Laura Trujillo is a writer and a mother of four living in Ohio.

Like All the Moms?

Connect with us on Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mom: My baby is graduating high school and I can't wait. Don't wish yours stay small