Speeding By

I knew back when Alyssa started her freshman year that her four years of high school would fly by.

I knew that I needed to try and cherish every moment, every band concert, each evening at home watching television with her (at the time, we were engrossed in The Middle and The Goldbergs), very school musical, every track meet, every homecoming dance and every prom.

I knew that the days would drag but the weeks, months and years would sprint past us.

And yet here we are, on the cusp of her high school graduation and I’m looking back and wondering where it all went. We have pictures to prove we lived it all but it seems like just last week she was rehearsing for her role in Shrek and yet that was freshman year.

She’s already pulling away. She has been for months. She basically spent the weekend of prom away from home. And that’s okay. That’s how it should be. But it’s bittersweet for me and Tom. We already miss her and she’s not even truly gone yet.

I want so much for her. I want her to enjoy every minute of her life, not be waiting for the next thing and then the next. I want her to wring the joy and fun out of each experience, to know that this one moment can be the best until the next best moment comes along.

I hope I’ve instilled even a little bit of whimsy in her. I hope she takes time to find the whimsical trees planted beside office buildings and the pleasure of sleeping late. I hope she sees that the world can be so very magical even though there is so much that needs to be changed and fixed.

High school isn’t the best life has to offer but it can be amazing. I think she’s had a good four years. She’s made wonderful friendships, found love, worked hard and played harder…I hope.

We still have years of love and fun ahead of us.

I just wish I could slow things down, even just a little, for her and for me. I want to freeze these moments and step through my magical tree once in a while to revisit the evenings on the couch, the times around the dinner table, the Saturdays at lunch and the moments when she was fourteen and obsessed with Pentatonix. I’d go back to when she was four and pretending to be a horse, or a lion or the little mermaid, just to watch her, to soak her in, her innocence, her beauty, her imagination. I’d preserve some of those precious parts of her and give back to her so she can fall back on them when life gets hard and boring and lackluster. I’d give her those moments back so she can use them to get through adulthood with a little bit of whimsy still inside her.

She’s growing up so fast; too fast. I want to grab her and hug her close and remind her that her entire adult life is ahead of her and she needs to slow down and be a kid for as long as she can. The whole wide world is waiting for her and she’s going to do amazing things in it but she doesn’t have to do them all right now. She can stop for a minute and just remember that little girl who bravely switched schools when she was seven, who made new friends and played Hunger Games with those new friends in 4th grade. She can be the girl who memorized all the members of Pentatonix birthdays and quizzed me regularly to ensure I was paying attention. She can play board games on a Friday night and sleep in on Saturday, hugging her stuffed dog in her sleep.

The world will be there when she’s ready and I know she’s ready now. But maybe I’m not quite there yet.