How Baby

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had a profound parenting realization while looking at a tree…

Momo and I try to have a picnic under the cherry blossoms every spring, and this year we were a little late and the trees had started pushing out their new leaves. We were commenting on it when I stumbled, as one does, into some subconscious thought I must have been chewing on that just needed a metaphor to be born as words.

It’s a weird time in Momo’s life in all the normal social-emotional-physical ways that being twelve is, and watching her from the outside is its own weird time – my own memories, my present anxieties, my lifelong insecurities, all overlaid with the wisdom of age and my desire to be a good parent.

The tween years get so much disrespect, and it really breaks my heart. No longer impressionable, malleable children, and not self-sufficient adults. Not the beautiful and short-lived cherry blossoms that signify rebirth and potential, and not the mature tree that shelters and provides. In between. Awkward, lumpy, frequently littering everywhere. Ignored. Mourned, just for being what they are, and doing what comes naturally.

But we sat down under the trees the other day, and we looked up, and appreciated taking the time to really see them.