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Soon They'll Be Walking
A Mom Grows Up
By Sharon Miller Cindrich
f outstretched arms found me. I knew that within seconds, the carrying and holding and hanging would return, that this was just a preview of my children's independence from me; they were far from graduating. 
And I knew that these new tidbits of freedom left me able to do even more with them. Without a baby on my back or a child on my shoulders, we could swim more, bake more and dance more. I would have more time to watch and more patience to wait and more energy to push the swings or tie the water balloons or read the bedtime stories. I would be less anxious to hurry them away to bed, to preschool or to a babysitter, and I knew the time would come where I would long for their attention, their touch, their wanting me – like this little moment in the elevator.
I looked down at the growing bodies that I carried inside me not long ago, my whole body preciously wrapped around them. And after years of holding them, first in my womb, then under my arms, I now barely held them by just five little fingers, wiggling fingers eager to run away from me and push the elevator buttons themselves and wave good-bye. And though my mind rejoiced in thoughts of eating a meal without a child on my lap, I felt a different heaviness, an ache in my heart. I had not realized how much of them I carried there.
As the elevator doors opened to the parking lot, my arms shot from my sides instinctively, gratefully grabbing my son up on my hip and pulling my daughter close to my thigh while I walked them safely to the car.
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