Five Minute Friday: Finish

It usually doesn't come with a warning.  There's no grand finish line.  No horns blowing or flags waving to signal the end.  It just quietly and uneventfully ends.  And suddenly you look back and realize that it's over.  It's gone.  The baby stage is past and the toddler stage is here.  Then you get busy again and notice that the toddler stage is over and in place of the toddler I find an active, articulate little girl. Barely even a preschooler any more.  She reads alone.  She makes her own breakfast.  She doesn't need or want me in the bathroom with her.  She gets dressed alone.  Just like that babyhood/toddlerhood is behind.  It never even said good-bye.

Most things in life are like that, I think.  Oh, some go with a clanging finality.  The family house being sold.  The son moving away to college or the daughter getting married.  But most other more nebulous stages just quietly end.  And the finale passes us in quiet ordinariness.  

I don't remember the last day Jacie pronounced sausage "ostrich."  But she says it right now.  I don't remember the last day I could read to her and skip sections without her knowing 'cuz she's reading along right with me.  I didn't know the last time she begged me to come in the bathroom and help her on the toilet would be the last time.  She hasn't needed me for months now.  

I embrace the finish because it signals an exchange -- a new set of adventures and learning and development.  But sometimes I wish I had said good-bye to the last stage before I realized it was already finished.