3 years, 3 months

Three years, three months.
If all goes as planned, and my firstborn flies from our nest in September, three years and three months is how long i got to have all my chickies under one roof.
It seems like such a strangely small wisp of time when i compare it with my decades of motherhood. Wobbly first steps, night wakings, bloody tooth removals, stubby finger pointing to sight words and lisping mouths sounding them out.  Baking cookies, studying for learner's licences, fender benders, high school credits...
It has been such a whirlwind of constant addition in these years. Another voice, another mouth to feed, another pair of shoes to buy, another pillow for another head, another opinion, talent, heart. One more baby, another life, another start...
And now, to start the process of subtraction in our household seems to weigh rather heavily some days. Oh, i know, i know... i'm adding a son. A son who gets us, who loves us, who feels like he's ours in every way... i love him. But they are going to be a "them" too... separate. Distinct. A family of their own, subtracted from us - the first in what will be a series of subtractions in the years to come.

Three years and three months is not a lot of time. It feels like Elmer and Cairo have both always been here. It feels like i have been a mother to these eight since the dawn of time... but that's just not so. One, two, three... they came so quickly... four and five... till we almost felt overwhelmed... but i begged for more... six, seven, eight... my bonus boys... And i would have been content to keep adding, but time grows babies, and years stretch legs and arms. Decades bring them to adulthood, and marriage means letting go.

Three years and three months... we were all under one roof... bumping into each other in our narrow kitchen, sharing beds, organizing mounds of shoes in the entrances, fighting, making music, schooling, eating at a table that didn't fit us all around it's merry sides...

Hardly seems long enough...