Where is that sexy young girl I married?

A couple of years ago, I was in the process of creating a haven of romance in our house, while Chris and the girls are in the US with family. (Well actually I was Re-doing our bedroom, hoping that it will re-kindle that flame which once burned hot to the touch). Typically we just burn the candle at both ends and get to the end of the day with good intentions. but just pick up a good book instead.

During this process I began to realize what had happened to that ‘Sexy Young Girl’ I married. Turns out that she had got lost in that thing we call ‘Motherhood.’ I was cleaning out her bedside cupboard as the mystery began to unravel. Putting all of her personal items into a box the story began to unfold. First there was the usual make up and lotions, which are generally sold as snake oil, inferring that we can all look ten years younger if applied twice a day. Then there was a collection of toiletries that well meaning friends had bought over the years, but never used.

A stack of Christmas and Birthday cards. Memories of how time has slipped by so quickly. Cards for Paige who only yesterday we brought home from the hospital and who is now 6 ½. Cards for Erin who is 17 and who looks for all the world like the girl in the pictures from 30 years ago. Cards from me on our wedding anniversary, now 25 years. Small items of jewelry that the girls have made or bought, kept safe from harm so precious now to their Mother.

Items locked away in drawers made by little hands at school and given on Mothers Day. An item of clothing so long forgotten by it’s owner but kept as a door to the past when we were slimmer and with less smile lines. (When we went dancing)

This is where the ‘Sexy Young Girl’ I married lives now, in days of promise of the futures and glances back into the past. She lives within her daughters and through the birthday cards and handmade gifts and paintings of dogs and sisters. 

It is so much easier for men, we just look for that next adventure and we take off at a whim. Mothers cannot do that unless everyone goes. They don’t get to look for themselves in mid life. They simple find themselves in cards and hand made gifts from little hands.

I wake up every morning and there she is, that ‘Sexy Young Girl’ I fell in love with, lying right beside me. She is there beside me as we walk hand in hand along life’s road and she is still as sexy and as breath taking as she ever was.  And while the candle still tends to burn at both ends, it is also very hot in the middle sometimes.

Loosing our Innocence.

When I was sixteen I joined the Army. I was given a rifle and told (in not so many words) don't kill anyone unless you mean to.

In that first few months of being in the Army I crossed a line and lost my Innocence. At the time I didn't realise it but life had changed for me and I could never go back. When I came home on leave everything had changed, my friends, me, my position in life. Actually what had happened was I had changed, but everything else had stayed the same and not moved on much from where I had left it. Why should it? We were all only sixteen, we were in fact, still just teenagers. My friends saw life through a much more innocent set of circumstances than I.

I do not regret those choices I made, they have helped create who I am today.

I look at my daughter now, she is seventeen. She is trying so hard to be grown up but the truth is, she is still a teenager, a child. I like that and I understand that soon she will also have to become an adult. I don't want to hold her back or get in the way, in fact I want to do everything I can to prepare her for that day when she leaves home and is ready to take on the world on her own terms. But until that time comes she will be my little girl and that is fine by me.

A childhood is a precious thing and should be cherished, not abandoned and forgotten.