AaaaahwoOOOooooo

As I was rearing our 5 children there would be times when I would wonder to myself, "When are their real parents coming to pick them up?" Kind of a baby sitter moment in time when I wondered how I came into charge of all these really incredible people who out think me and will definitely out perform me in a matter of years. "I am incompetent!" "I am transparent and unworthy!" "I am woman - hear me snore!"

I think about the utter panic God must have felt when He looked down and noticed that hubby and I had actually conceived and were about ready to give birth to His kids. It was with the first one that He must have thrown His hands in the air and then sent some whammy on us so that they would turn out as well as they did. (There have been comments made over the years referring our parenting skills to those of wolves.)

Well, yesterday number five had her 18th birthday. According to the law of the land hubby and I are no longer responsible for her nor any of her siblings. The good ol' U.S. of A. has declared us free spirits. I should be happy and delirious with thoughts of road trips and naked house keeping (or so they tell me...although there are visuals that prohibit too many of those thoughts). In the back of my gray matter there are indeed scenes of redoing the bedroom so that it accommodates years of my imaginations and desires for creativity... but then there are the other thoughts.

Melancholy set in hard and heavy about 5:00 p.m. and a full gale reigned (and rained) in about 9:30 or so. My "babies" are all grown up and "officially" my work is done. But there are the eternal whisperings that tell me it's all just beginning and not to get too anxious about those surf short curtains a newly redone bedroom. Not like she'll be coming back any time soon; but that even with the older ones already gone and living with their own families, she'll still need me from time to time. Me, the momma wolf who, at times, understood why mother's in the wild sometimes eat their young.