She smiles as she enters the pew on the opposite end from where I’m sitting. Three little boys, all in a row, file in after her and before her husband.
She leads with her belly, round and ripe and ready. It’s a girl. And I’m very sure that this is her last Sunday before a baby in pink is cradled on her lap and little boys all jostle for a position next to their sister. In front of me, a mom sits between two little girls, a third on her lap. And then it hits me.
I used to be a mom with three little boys before a baby girl. And that mom in front? She’s in my “usual” seat — the one I sit in with my own three girls, that last of my nine, the only ones who moved with us when we came to Connecticut six years ago. They were younger when we arrived. Now, they’re grown and nearly gone. I wonder when the last time was that one of my children sat on my lap. So often, we don’t know when the last time for something is the last time. But sometimes we do.
I’m acutely aware that this is the last summer of the “little girls,” so named many years ago when they shared a bedroom and a triple bunk and all the privileges of birth order bestowed on the last three babies. They’ve been a unit for so long, and their bond became even stronger when they came with us in the spring of 2020, when the whole world was shut down, and all they had was each other in a strange new place. This is our seventh summer here. It is not lost on me that seven is the number of completion.
Last weekend was our homeschool group’s graduation. That means that everything that happens between now and this week next year happens for the last time. Not just the last time until the next time with the next kid — the actual last time. The last time for her and the last time for me. The last summer of the little girls all under our roof.
What catches me off guard is not that this season is ending. Every season ends. I have lived through enough of them to know that much. Babies become children. Children become teenagers. Teenagers become adults who call from college dorm rooms and apartments and airport gates.
What catches me off guard is the finality.
For more than three decades, there was always another child coming along behind the others. When one stage ended, another began. When one child outgrew bedtime stories, there was a younger sibling waiting for one more chapter. When one graduated, there were still nature days at Bull Run Park, ballet recitals and soccer tournaments. The rhythm continued, changing but never really stopping.
Now I find myself standing at the edge of a different landscape.
The little girls are no longer little. One is gathering her own baking pans and kitchen tools. Another spends her school year in Scotland. The youngest, who somehow remained everyone’s baby long after she stopped being one, is dancing and singing and playing that grand piano into what increasingly sounds like the crescendo just before the quiet finale. The current keeps moving in one direction.
This summer feels sacred because I can see its ending before it arrives.
The family dinners. The spontaneous ice cream runs. The chatter drifting down to me late at night when sisters forget they are supposed to be sleeping. The pile of garden boots by the back door. The familiar soundtrack of girls moving through the house together.
None of it is disappearing tomorrow. Yet I find myself paying closer attention, storing away ordinary moments with a tenderness that comes from knowing they will not always be mine to keep. Perhaps this is one of the hidden gifts of the last time. It teaches us to be present for the now.
The days themselves have not changed. The laundry still waits. The dishwasher still needs emptying. Someone still asks what is for dinner just as I am settling into work. But I know too well that these ordinary moments are not interruptions to life. They are the life.
And for one more summer, all three little girls are still home.
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
