I'll miss you when you're not here.

It's weird to look back on all the posts here. Strange to see the path of my existence, my experiences here for the last few years. Minimal thought my posts have been, still they are markers of moments in my world. Things are changing. More has changed this last couple years than I can even think of. Maybe it's leaving the last vestiges of childhood behind, turning that corner past twenty five, having kids, being with my job for more than five years. I don't know. Maybe not. All I know is that my life is nothing I could have imagined back at 18, or even twenty. A thousand thoughts, a million experiences, an infinite number of blessings and the occasional regrets all seem to culminate to now.
 What is now? 30, certainly one of those mile marker sort of birthdays. So I am told, and so it seems to be. Easier to look forward than back. Easier to look back than to think of now. Now is dissolution of a marriage, taking on a new level of responsibility at work, trying to be the best mother I can be, and learning to honor myself within all of those many things while still taking care of all those that I love.
Not sure where I was going anywhere in particular with this . I hadn't planned on posting anything, but I opened my father's blog tonight to check up on things. I looked at his picture and wondered when we all found ourselves in the future. Somewhere inside I'm still the 8 year old girl he used to pick up at five am on special mornings to go to breakfast before school and talk about science fiction. He made such a difference in my world. Now as my own marriage dissolves and I am wondering how to balance the impact to my own daughters. I hope we can do at least as well as my parents did. Maybe it wasn't always perfect but I think , for me at least, it was enough. My husband, someday ex, and I sat down with the girls and broke the news to them. We explained the best that we could. The youngest really was too young to pay attention, or to really understand. My eldest though... I could see her thinking it through. She asked about what car would go with who. She asked how things would work. She mulled it over and we answered as best we could until she was out of questions. When we were done, when he had left and the toys were busy being redistributed on the floor by the youngest, then my eldest came to me and sat in my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck and cried. She tucked her cheek in the hollow of my neck and she said " I'll miss you when you're not here." and oh how my heart broke cause I know how much I will miss her too.
And tonight... I was looking at my dad's blog and I was thinking how strange it is that so much of our lives are out here on the internet now. How in some ways we'll never really be gone, whether we age, whether we die. Pieces of us will always be here for the people in our lives to trip over every now and then. I am watching my elders start to enter that age where you wonder when you'll be receiving a sorrowful phone call. I hope it's so many many years away. I hope they know, my parents, how much I love them. Maybe it's time I hug them and let them know I'll miss them...when they're not here.