Deadline

Today is the Fall Equinox. Yesterday was the last day of summer. I wonder now how I let it pass so disregarded. Today is also my 31st birthday, wherein I pass from the summer of my life into the autumn, moving from the time of planting and sowing into the time of harvest.

What the heck am I talking about, right?

My mother had me when she was 16 years old. Being but children, my biological parents didn't stay together for even a year. When I was 6 months old, my mother met the man who has been my father for my whole life. They were young parents, and pretty great parents. Unfortunately, they were unable to have any more children. (This fact actually affected how many children I ended up having... to kind of make up for the fact that my mom couldn't have as many as she wanted.)

I have said in the past how close I am to my folks. I was always the kind of kid who listened to what they said and took it to heart (excepting a few teenage, religion-addled years where I thought they were stupid and going to hell.) My folks always said, "People should have children when they are young and poor! So they have the energy to deal with them and are less likely to spoil them." Now, my parents aren't particularly judgmental and that is a pretty judgmental statement. Even sitting here keying it out, I can see a lot of flaws in that line of thinking. However, there are some truths to it too. I can see that from watching a few grandparents in my family having to raise their children's children. It doesn't work out so well sometimes. The grandparents get sick and the children have to leave their homes to live elsewhere. Uprooted. Broken. Sad. Some of my parents accepting this line of thinking as a basically good idea might have been to simply justify the life path they had chosen, as well.

Anyway, growing up with this philosophy, I wanted to be done having kids by the time I was 30. This is a personal, and frankly arbitrary choice. I have known for a while that Honey doesn't want any more babies because he is ready to move on from the diapers-and-no-sleep stage of our lives. And I am ready for vacations and no scheduled naps wrecking weekend plans and 8 hours of solid sleep a night, too. But it is just this morning, sitting and drinking my coffee that I realize that if I am going to stick to my goal of being done before my 30th year ends, the deadline has come and my childbearing years have ended - by my choice, but still. Ended. Today.

And I am a bit sad because change makes me sad. In some ways I don't want to move on, and my heart is still a bit bruised knowing there will be no more floppy newborn moments or first smiles from my own sweet babies. But I can feel time marching forward, regardless of how I feel about it. I can see Brother going to his first school dance tonight and Jelly playing soccer like a big kid in the local league and Scooter starting to stand for 10-15 seconds at a time unaided. Time marches on. I think Devan once said that it was time to move from making a family to growing a family.

So, summer fades into fall in more ways than one. I feel like there should have been a celebration and a mourning. A note of the decisions made that leave other options opted out of. The fork in the road. One path chosen leaving the other path and all the possibilities associated with it behind. The only thing left for me to do is remember the past, embrace now, and plan for the future.