By Amy Keyes 
When my boys were younger, I always knew when they were hitting a growth spurt. Aches and pains came out of nowhere. Tears flowed freely over the littlest things. Insatiable appetites had us restocking the fridge every few days. Hours and hours of naps. And then, they would emerge on the other side, a few inches taller. A few inches more mature. A few inches closer to manhood.
These days, those growth spurts seem to have leveled out for them, and somehow those growing pains have become mine. Maybe it’s being middle-aged (just turning 50) and having a senior in high school, but I’m feeling it all—and it’s no joke.
The aches and pains are coming in hot, and they are hitting way more than just physically. Sure, I feel it in my knees when I run one mile too far or try to get up off the floor too quickly. I mean, truth be told, I’m no spring chicken. But, mostly I feel it in my heart.
Like, when I catch a glimpse of the stacks of college flyers piled on the table. Or, when I watch families, who clearly have been apart for some time, reuniting at a restaurant, and I realize, that soon, that will be us as our son heads off to college. Or, when I watch my kids as they fly off to practice or to grab dinner with friends, and I feel the thickness of the silence like a blanket of snow, heavy and deep. There’s a pull of my heartstrings, tightening just enough to remind me that the tide is turning once again into a new phase of life for us all.
A time when my boys get home way too late for me to tuck them in, and sleep in way too late for me to do anything more than gently whisper goodbye from the door frame as I leave for work. A time when in just a few short months, my years of parenting their childhoods will be over, and I will be walking side by side with my adult children.
The tears flow so freely now. I’ve turned into a faucet that seems to drip no matter how tight you try to twist the handle. A puddle of emotion just thinking about how quickly the time has and will continue to pass. A welling up in my eyes and throat has seemingly taken on permanent residency and spills over at any little thing. Every little thing suddenly seems so big in magnitude as I count down these moments of lasts.
And, let me tell you . . . while there’s not enough chocolate in the world during these years, it’s my appetite for time together I crave the most and can never seem to get enough of. Busy schedules make it virtually impossible to even sit down for dinner together. Brief and hurried conversations as we pass by one another—someone always heading somewhere.
I think back to the years when we seemed to have all the time in the world together, and my stomach aches for those moments again. Those years when I had no time for naps of my own. But when I would gently shift sleeping bodies from my lap to the couch so I could toss in a quick load of laundry or finish grading a few papers my students were waiting far too long to get back. And now, the hours of free time are mine alone—to close my eyes and dream of the days gone by and the days still to come.
These middle age growing pains are real. And they are no joke. They are a reminder of the reality of where I am in life. So blessed to be here, and also in awe of how much time I have collected to look back on. My own moments of youth are stacked in piles of photos. A time that seems like just yesterday and forever ago all at once. The realization that my husband and I have been lucky enough to build this beautiful life together, at the same time, leaves me marveling at how quickly this life is going.
These growing pains are the epiphany that my own kids are so close to entering their own time to fly and build the lives they are dreaming of for themselves, to hopefully, in time, meet the people they will build those lives with and continue the circle of life that I imagine leads most of us to the reflective state I’m swimming in during these years.
These growing pains are hard, and they are also a reminder that it’s also my time to evolve, to remember who I am alongside being a parent, and to begin to reclaim those pieces of my own individual identity, that have been bundled inside the collective one that has defined me for the past 18 years.
And I imagine that following this time—filled with all the aches and pains, tears and hunger, and naps—I will emerge a few inches closer to understanding how to navigate this new phase of life.
by Cherith Fluker 
by Jess Litterell 
