A few years ago, a dear and cherished friend said to me,"we can't go backward - only forward". I was starting a new job, and that sentiment to me at that time was the kiss of death. I wanted to keep all the previous magic going, to relive it. In looking ahead, I saw no chance of anything getting better than it had been. By saying what was said, I think my friend was encouraging me to be open to possibility and to a future that could be more magical than the past I had already lived.
My friend was right of course. Life brought more magic, magic I wouldn't have experienced if things had stayed the same. We can't go backward even though backward is safer. Forward is scary. Forward is unknown. Forward takes courage and an adventurous spirit that I think I left behind in Sweden.
But as moms do, I'm soldiering onward anyway. I'm trying to imagine what Sprout's life will be like over the next 3 years. Who will he turn into next? What will his life be like? How much of a social animal will he become? and all because he needs a new cellphone and the plan is for 3 years and I'm trying to decide between buying into what he may want in the future or just going with the guy he is today. I don't know. Today he thinks Facebook is a waste of time. Will he always? Just because today the cell phone is a novelty that never seems to be on when Mother calls, does that mean that 6 months from now he won't be wishing he could access the internet from said phone to look something up with his buddies? If only I could pop into the future to check...
Looz is getting her drivers' license tomorrow. No I'm not frightened. It's a right of passage and deserves to be celebrated as such. So she's going to learn to drive in the Mercedes not the Volkswagon. Years from now when she talks about learning to drive, the story will come out (yes Mom you've told me about practising parking in the school parking lot and how Grampa wouldn't let you have the radio on because he thought you wouldn't concentrate but you turned it on anyway)(btw, the song was She Blinded Me With Science and the car was a rust coloured Mustang hatchback) I want her story to be memorable. Maybe even magical. (So my dad was living in Moscow at the time and my mom taught me to drive...)
Courage my love. Only forward.
