Growth

What a gift it is to have gone on this same trip and sat on this same tree exactly one year later.  I have learned more... grown more... this year than any other.  Chris and I talk all the time about how before we became parents, there were so many threats about how our life will change and how "hard" it will become and how little time we will have for each other and ourselves.  These things couldn't be further from the truth in our experience.  Our life has only evolved and grown. Change is not the word that I would use.  For change and growth are both so very important, but they imply very different things.  Being a parent has not changed us.  We do all of the things we did before only now we get to share them more fully and we believe all of the same truths that we did before and now they just seem even more deep and important.  Trees grow taller and wider and the roots grow deeper, but they don't change.  And time has just become more rich, more complete.  Being a mother has been having time for myself - because I am more myself than I ever have been.  Time for each other and time for ourselves have never been more real and plentiful.  Time is exactly what we have and it is filled to the brim and just grows each year*.


we all truly have grown
even the trees.

*That is not to say that time doesn't fly so fast that I can barely catch it by the tail before it is gone into memory-land...