I met you when I was 17 years old. I cried when I first got to hold you. It’s been almost three years since I first found out I was going to be an aunt. Now, I look at you sleeping on my bed in the room that I have known since before I was your age. I look at you and realize how fast it goes. I realize that my mom probably laid next to me when I was your age in the same house and stared at me every now and then just to take it in. I realize that it won’t be like this for long, you won’t be like this for long.
Wow, little girl, I’m going to miss you. I’m going to miss your little fingers wrapped around mine as you fall asleep for your afternoon nap. I’m going to miss the way you so ungracefully run when you’re excited to get somewhere (I secretly hope you always run like that). I’m going to miss the way you say, “Hold you?” when you want someone to pick you up.
I know that there will be new things that I’ll love about you, new phases you’ll pass through that I won’t want you to leave. But it’s such an unsettling feeling to know that one day I’ll be wishing to come back to right now. I hope with all of my heart that I can remember these days, the little person you are now. I hope that there aren’t too many tomorrows, too many memories being made, too many yous crammed in between today and a lifetime from today, that I accidentally forget what these days feel like. I imagine though, inevitably, that I will.
I will forget the way people look at me for clarification when you say something they can’t understand, but to me it’s clear as day. I will forget how it feels for you to scream my name as I walk through the door, because I’m sure one day you’ll be too old for that. I will unknowingly forget the you that you are today, and start to get used to the you you’ll be turning into.
It is such a bittersweet feeling to know that you won’t always be the little girl with hair bows and sparkles clinging around my leg when you start to feel shy around people. One day I’ll stop getting calls when you get sick at the babysitter’s and need to be picked up. One day I’ll stop finding your little messes you secretly make in my bedroom. One day I’ll get rid of your car seat that I’ve spent countless times cleaning French fries and chicken nuggets out of. There will be no more traces left behind of the person you are today and I dread that day. I really do, because the scariest part of it all is that it’ll leave without me even noticing it. It’ll be traded in for something different, like the way you traded in your pacifiers for stuffed animals, diapers for big girl pants. It just slowly changes and slips away without warning.
Life does that all the time. I know, because it wasn’t too long ago that I was getting used to a phase of life without you in it. Then, without warning, I got used to life with you in it – and now it’s hard to even remember what it was like before you.
When you get old enough to realize life doing that to you, I hope you hold on tight. I hope you breathe it in. I hope you just fully live in it, because the bitterness that comes with the sweet is that you can’t keep it. You can’t keep the old part of you while gaining the new part. You can’t have both, but the sweet part is that they are both beautiful. They are both significant and wonderful. They are both heartbreakingly hard to let go of and that is the best part - you always have something good to look back on and always have something good to look forward to.
Be brave, little one. Be kind. Be unapologetically you.
