One Season Ahead

There are moments in parenting when you hand over something that feels just a little too big.

A real glass instead of the plastic one.

The house key.

The sharp kitchen knife.

The first time they answer the door, greet a guest, or carry a plate to the table without you hovering close behind.

You watch from the edges, trying to look calmer than you feel.

Because if you’re honest, you’re not entirely sure they’re ready.

Then again, you’re not entirely sure you are either.

I’ve started wondering if part of raising children is learning to live just one season ahead of them.

Not rushing them. God knows I don’t want to rush them. Childhood seems determined to do that all on its own.

But quietly putting the next thing within reach. Giving them a little more responsibility than yesterday required. Trusting them with something they haven’t entirely proven they can handle yet, and watching what happens.

Sometimes they rise to it.

Sometimes they remind you quite convincingly that they are still seven.

Both, I think, are part of it.

This summer, I have felt the seasons changing everywhere I look.

My eldest seems to be standing right on the edge of true boyhood now. He grew what feels like three inches in a matter of weeks. There are gaps where baby teeth used to be. He ties his own shoelaces. He makes eggs at the stove. So many of the little accommodations of early childhood have quietly disappeared without anyone announcing their departure.

There was no last time I tied his shoes that I can remember.

That’s the trouble with childhood. So much of it ends without telling you it’s ending.

My middle started kindergarten this week.

I put him in his uniform and suddenly there was a schoolboy standing where my little kid had been. His vocabulary seems to be growing by the hour. He informs us when he is being antagonized. He asks me to quiz him on math for fun.

And then there is my little, who has left babyhood with considerably less ceremony.

He is a true chunky toddler now, moving through the house with the confidence of someone who owns it. He steals markers, draws on the walls as fast as his little hand will move, and takes off running the second he realizes you’ve caught wind of the operation.

None of these changes happened neatly.

They arrived fast and clunky.

A boy who can cook his own breakfast but still needs his mother.

A kindergartener using four-syllable words who is still small enough to crawl into my lap.

A baby becoming a toddler with a marker clenched in his fist.

Maybe that’s why it’s so difficult to know when they’re ready for the next thing. Childhood doesn’t give us clean edges. There is no morning when one season ends and another politely begins.

For a while, they are both.

And I suppose we are too.

One of the strangest parts of motherhood is that I am always pulling in two directions.

I want to keep this version of them.

I also want to prepare them for the one who is coming.

I want to stop and smell every rose, while somehow remembering to plant the garden they’ll need next year.

Those instincts can feel contradictory. We are constantly told not to rush childhood, and I believe that deeply. I don’t want miniature adults sitting around my dinner table. I want grubby knees and ridiculous jokes and boys who occasionally forget where they left their shoes.

But I also don’t want the next season to arrive and find them completely unprepared for it.

So I’ve started thinking of my job as staying one season ahead.

Not five seasons. Not dragging summer into spring.

Just one.

Close enough to see what’s coming.

This summer, without quite realizing it at first, we’ve been practicing some of this.

We’ve practiced how to host people before anyone expects them to be hosts. How to introduce two people who don’t know each other. How to notice what needs doing and leave a place better than we found it. How to lose graciously, make something useful, earn money, set a table.

Tiny rehearsals for a life they aren’t living yet.

And then there are the quieter promotions that happen without a lesson attached.

Walking into the bakery alone.

Using the stove.

Carrying something breakable.

Being trusted with a real tool.

Or, against my better judgment, a pocket knife.

The pocket knife may be the clearest example because I wasn’t entirely convinced either of us was ready for it.

But that’s the thing I’ve begun to understand about readiness.

We tend to think competence should come first and responsibility second. Show me you can handle it, and then I’ll trust you with it.

Childhood seems to work the other way around surprisingly often.

Sometimes responsibility is the thing that calls competence forward.

You hand them something slightly bigger than the child they were yesterday, and they straighten a little under its weight.

Not always. Sometimes you take the marker away and wash the wall.

But often enough, they surprise you.

Maybe staying one season ahead isn’t really about pushing them forward at all.

Maybe it’s about noticing.

Noticing the missing tooth. The shoelace tied without help. The word you didn’t know they knew. The suddenly long legs sticking out beneath the school uniform.

Seeing the next season beginning before the last one has entirely left.

And making a little room for it.

I don’t want to rush childhood.

I want to be present enough to recognize when it is already moving.

To linger where we are, certainly. To smell the roses. To let them be little and silly and completely unfinished.

But also to notice the buds forming for whatever comes next.

Because the seasons arrive whether I’m ready for them or not.

This summer, apparently, all three of my boys decided to change at once.

Fast and clunky and right in front of me.

So I’m trying to do both.

Keep one eye on the season ahead.

And both feet firmly planted in this one — even while someone is yelling from the other room that they are, in fact, being antagonized.