She turned five yesterday. The past few days have been a whirlwind of family and celebration and tea parties and Walden pond and go go go go. It has been all that she wanted and has been very much her.
Last night she woke up in the middle of the night, and she and I snuck outside with blankets to snuggle on the porch and look up at the sky. For the second night in a row we tried to see a few shooting stars. But last night, as the air changed and a veil of clouds was drawn over the earth, we only saw the bigness of the universe. The smallness of us. She leaned her head back on my chest as she sat in my lap, smelling largely of summer and faintly of the Chinese food we had for dinner... and I felt her bigness. All of her five years was sitting right there in my lap. I remembered her smallness, too. The little fingers and toes, onesies and pacifiers and teeny tiny diapers. Her bald baby, and then toddler head. Her wild and sweet spirit that we met the moment she was born.
She told me before her birthday that she was nervous about turning five. That she would miss being four, she missed when she was a baby. So I told her what I tell myself. Each day you are a day older. The numbers, they don't matter. You are you, you learn new things every day, and each day you grow a little and settle into you a bit more. She smiled, and said "Okay, mama."
I will never get used to how fast these children grow. But what an honor, a gift, to watch them grow into themselves.
A day into five, and five suits her.