The first time my Grandma met Cora, she was about 3 months old, still brand-spanking new.  As my Grandma’s weathered hands softly stroked the silkiness of my baby’s hands, she remarked, “Their skin is so soft in the beginning.  You wonder when they lose it.”  At the time I chalked it up to a silly musing with no deeper meaning.  But since Grandma’s passed away, for some reason I can’t get those words out of my head.  It’s been almost a year since she spoke them, and Cora’s now a full-blown toddler: running, yelling, and giggling until she can’t breathe.

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I love that little bundle of energy more than life itself, but she’s become quite a handful since my Grandma saw her last.  She falls as much as she walks, she bumps into furniture, the dog, and sometimes into seemingly nothing.  What’s more, she gets a scratch here from a little too much rough housing and a mosquito bite there from spending all her time out on our front deck.  She’s not a glistening creamy white baby anymore, she’s a rough and tumble human tornado.  In other words, as my Grandmother put it, she’s losing “it”.

It brings tears to my eyes even typing right now to think about my baby growing into a little girl, a miniature person with thoughts, feelings, and a heart (not to mention body) that can be hurt.  But then I realize, I don’t think my Grandma meant what she said in a negative light.  Cora’s just growing up, she’s experiencing all sorts of new things, and with that comes a whole host of dangers and bumps along the road.  Some of these show up physically as scraped knees and busted lips, but I’d rather her be sporting those injuries than none at all.

It occurs to me that this is the first whisperings of learning to let go as a parent.  She’s got to fall down and pick herself up.  If she kept her perfect newborn skin her whole life, I haven’t done my job as her mother.  I’ve got to let her live.  Of course right now that just means letting her play in the dirt and trying not to hover when she’s climbing the stairs, but someday it’s going to mean letting her go out on a date, and go off to college four hours away.  And just like there’s no exact moment when Cora lost her newborn status, there’s probably not going to be a defined moment when I’m ready for that.  And that’s okay by me.

 

XO,

A