RIDING THE RAPIDS

July 1, 2011

Hello Doodleheads! As your technologically savvy Doodler, I’ll have you know that I’m writing this on my iPad in the car as we are traveling back from a two day orientation at soon-to-be collegiate co-ed Carly’s soon-to-be new home, Belmont University in Nashville. What a wondrous place that is! I want to go to college all over again! But alas, methinks me oldish body would never survive a week of the college hijinksish and mind-bendingish life, much less four years of it. I’m half dead (maybe even three quarters) after only two days!

Walking back and forth all over campus, up and down flights of steps and hills, trying to absorb reams of information flying at me at a speed faster than I could manage to get my reading glasses out of my purse and find a working pen to copy down the online whatsit to tell Carly to go to in order to take care of this detail and contemplate that choice or find this person to talk to about this essential element of survival–well, I can’t even keep up with what this sentence is supposed to convey, much less do that! Oh my! Youth is so wasted on the energetic young! If they only knew how much fun they are having when they’re having it!

The same goes for us older folks, I reckon. I wish I had realized how much fun I was experiencing when our girls were little, getting me up nearly every single night for 14 years to vomit, go pee pee, have a snack or just say “Hi, Mommy! Wanna play?”, or asking me the same question five times before moving on to the next one when learning to talk, or begging for back scratches nearly every night (this one is still ongoing), or needing help on homework (I have now completed each grade 4 times over, so I am a bonafide genius), or thinking up every conceivable type of birthday party possible for me to execute with flair and little money. Then there were all those wardrobe crises, and hair crises, and friendship crises, and major project crises, and crisis crises I was expected to somehow solve with a wave of my magical Mommy wand. And then there was the money, trickling in a window while flash flooding out the door (un huh, majorly still in the midst of that faith journey).

So much life has flowed under the parental bridge and it has flowed like the rapids. While I was busy trying to keep us all in the boat, avoiding drowning, I didn’t have time to enjoy the ride as much as I wish I had. I had my eyes set on the waves more than on all the laughter and joy exuding from my daughters’ faces.

But guess what? I’m determined to enjoy this last ride along College Boulevard. I may have to do it through phone calls, emails, Facebook, texts and phone pictures, but I’m doing it, if my brain has to absorb itself and reform into a technological marvel of 21st Century mommy hood!

I am a MESS right now, but only because I’ve been so blessed. If you see me mopping up tears one minute and laughing hysterically the next, don’t call the men with the white jackets on me. Just know that right now this is the way I’m praising God for all the years He’s given me with my three spectacular daughters. It’s a bit messy, but those rapids are still flowing, and I’m riding the waves with full on joy that tends to leak out my eyes at odd moments.

Hope your June was as full of life as mine was!