Growing Pains

It was somewhere in the slowness between sunset and sunrise, the house quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the heavy breathing of the dog. Rain pelted the window, but living deep in the pacific northwest, it’s a sound we are used to and feels like nature’s sound machine.

The stillness was interrupted by a cry from Leo.

Ouch, mom. Come here. Mommy…

I threw the covers off, and tiptoed to his room, careful not to wake anyone else and found Leo sitting upright, rubbing his foot. It wasn’t my first rodeo with these kinds of aches and pains - Elsie used to get them and because of that, I knew to go heat up a warm pack, and give him a little 3 a.m. leg massage. The duo worked like a charm, and he drifted back to sleep. As I laid shoulder to shoulder with him, feeling the rise and fall of his little-boy-chest, I couldn’t help but remember laying next to Elsie years ago doing the exact same thing.

But what I’ve learned lately is her growing pains aren’t over. Sure, they don’t wake her up with an achy leg in the early morning hours anymore, and they aren’t solved with a little bit of heat and a soft rub on the arch of her foot - but we find the aches and pains manifesting differently. She’s growing differently, or at least the almost ten-year-old growth is a different kind than her four-year-old little brother.

Elsie’s growing pains are in her heart and her mind and her consciousness. She’s learning more about the world and exploring friendships differently and feeling things like jealousy and empathy and worry. She now knows what it feels like to be left out and how it feels to fight with a friend and she has rode a sometimes bumpy path learning the curves and peaks and valleys of her own road. She’s already grown so much and sometimes, it has hurt.

As I tell her all of the time, she’s the best girl I know and I’ll love her forever, no matter what. In fact, she rolls her eyes at me when I tell her that I love her when she’s mad, I love her when she’s sad, I love her when she’s happy and I love her when she’s sad. I tell her (and Leo) this a lot, because it’s true and it’s important that they know and feel it.

And in all of it, me, a forty year old mom, I realize that I’ve been having growing pains too.

Gosh, it hurts. I hurt. It hurts when they’re sad and it hurts when they’re mad and my heart breaks when their hearts break and when they take their hurt and frustrations out on me, that hurts too. But I don’t need a warmed up rice-pack or a leg rub, because, well, because I love them when they’re mad and I love them when they’re sad and I love them when they’re happy and I love them when they’re glad.

I love that I get to be on this journey with them, together.

What I can give them always is a place to grow, whether that means growing up another inch or it means evolving into the amazing people I get to watch them become, and I can always give them comfort, because doing so comforts me. So I’ll be there, with whatever tools I need to ease them through the pains of growing up. Turns out, I’m still growing up too.