I have an eleven-year-old. At times I feel like Nora’s birthdays are celebrations, but also tiny losses. They’re bittersweet moments to marvel at future possibilities and find joy in the past year’s accomplishments, but also moments when I mourn the loss of tiny, sticky fingers reaching for my hand or slow, warm breath as she slept curled beneath the quilt on my bed.
Over the years and months – sometimes over a single day – I watched Nora’s babyhood melt away like an ice cream cone in the hot sun. Childhood never lasts long enough no matter how you try to savor it; dripping down your fingers despite how strongly you will it to stay cold so you can enjoy it more slowly.
Each year I think about how the last 12 months have slipped away. It seems like she went from a tiny baby to a toddler, to a six-year-old missing her front teeth, then a tween in the blink of an eye.
Perhaps it’s always that way for firstborns: you’re never really ready for them to grow up and every milestone comes and goes when you’re looking the other way. Then suddenly they’re on the cusp of their teenage years and you realize that there’s only a handful of years left until they leave home on their own forever.
This is Nora at 11. Still the kind and thoughtful girl that she was at two. A beautiful spirit who thinks about others first and is our “right-hand woman” around the house, helping with her sisters and chores happily. She’s studious, loves to read, plays piano, is a beautiful dancer, and thinks she might one day want to be a writer.
