Poor Me

I just want to express how unfair it all is. Really, time just doesn't seem to care about how much slower I need these things to go. I'm currently faced with the real disaster of my youngest and final child's - my baby - increasing age. In just a short seven days, my dear little Risa will turn a shocking three years old.

This development is shocking to me for many reasons. The first, and most obvious, is that these past few years have gone by so quickly that I barely even remember most of them. I feel like somewhere along the line I must have fallen asleep because suddenly we're at this new stage and I don't remember how we got here. It's so sad. I'm glad to see her growing up, of course, but these days of babyhood were the last for me. There will be no more children (unless God decides to play a decidedly cruel and humorless joke on me). Given that, I'm not ready for my youngest baby to stop being a baby.

Then there's the other reason for my shock and amazement at this interesting accomplishment that Marisa is about to attain. The fact is - I'm amazed the child is still alive. She's fearless. She's impulsive. She's the one who laughs at the thunder even when it's loud enough to shake the entire house. She's the one who takes herself to Grandma's or takes herself on walks outside without bothering to even tell anybody what she's up to. She's the one who jumps off the sofa and giggles when she lands on the hard floor. She's the one who climbs as high as she can just so she might be able - if she stretches just a little farther - to touch the ceiling (or the clouds).

She's also the one who runs into the water at the lake when everybody else is running out of the water because there's a - gasp - SNAKE IN THE WATER, and the snake decided to be curious about all the people so he came close enough to shore to be seen. Yes, this happened today. My darling little girl would have gladly chased after the poor, defenseless baby snake if she had been allowed to do so. Instead we let her stand and watch the snake from a distance that was sufficient enough to keep her from drowning. (I wasn't the least bit worried about that snake. It was the deeper water that bothered me.) Unfortunately all the grown men were so afraid of the baby snake that they felt the need to frighten it away before we were able to observe it to our own content. I was very disappointed about that.

At the lake today, Marisa was walking as deep as she could to see just how far we would let her go out. My niece, Anna, was right behind her at all times so safety was not an issue. However, my little baby would just keep walking even when the water was as high as her mouth. She would keep going and going and going if Anna did not stop her. She was determined to walk across the bottom of the lake, I believe, without regard to the fact that she couldn't possibly breath under all that water.

So next Friday I will celebrate Marisa's third birthday - and stand amazed at her ability to survive this long in spite of her overwhelming tendency to disregard any potential danger in favor of leaping out to grab the thrills of life. I sincerely hope that she holds on to that tendency as she grows. Fear is often the thing that prevents us from reaching our greatest possible achievements. If she never learns to fear, perhaps she will also never learn to give up.