Seventeen

Dear Katie,

It started happening in 2017.

In all the prior years - from 2003 to 2016 - I kept your pace. At least once a year, I got a gold star for mothering when I wrote your annual birthday letter. I could give myself a pat on the back for taking the time to pause and remember all that had passed in the previous year.

Then in 2017, I started slipping. The birthday letter I wrote that year was posted a month and a half late. The following year, I fully missed the mark but decided to cover it by writing a 15.5 birthday letter. In 2019, I didn't make the birthday deadline. No one could tell because the magic of blogging means you can choose your own date and time on a post.

In 2020, I didn't even try. Blame it on the Coronavirus pandemic or on my apathy - which could possibly be called by another name: awakening.

Because in 2020, everything changed. The qualifications for that mystical Best Mother Award went from performance to presence, from doing to being. And as your 17th birthday approached and we were three months into the pandemic, I came to the realization that we were seeing too many Lasts for my heart to keep up:

Your last marching band competition.

Your last day of junior year.

Your last gathering with friends.

Your last public Wind Ensemble performance.

Your last in-person audition.

So many lasts to even keep track! I didn't know then what I know now: those lasts weren't THE last, but they were the Lasts for the 16-year-old Katie of 2020. And for the heart of a mama whose baby is already aging at break-neck speed, I didn't have the energy to face the birthday letter milestone.

And then there was the awakening I mentioned, the realization that earning the yearly gold star goes way beyond a simple letter. In early 2020 as you approached your 17th birthday, I earned the gold star in other ways:

We started a daily walking routine and refused to break our streak for quite a while.

We watched movies I had always hoped to watch with you: City Slickers; Airplane; The Help; The Matrix; Planes, Trains, and Automobiles; Sleepless in Seattle; Big; Ghost; and Tommy Boy.

We took time to do crafts together.

We talked about loneliness, growing up, and your future.

My "mothering absolutes" went by the wayside as I had to relax certain rules such as no electronics in your bedroom. (How were you going to do online Zoom classes in the living room while your brother did his there too?)

Even in the isolation of quarantine, you kept aging and transforming and becoming. You learned to be resilient, to celebrate smaller things, and to hold loosely to plans that got cancelled repeatedly.

I'm sure your 17th birthday wasn't quite what you had in mind, but you rolled with that too. We got Chick-fil-A for breakfast, ate it at our friends' beautiful backyard waterfall, then spent the day at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Now, it's nine months later and I'm finally looking back at your 17th birthday. Just in time to start writing your 18th birthday letter, right? (Ugh!)

I was so proud of the young lady you were becoming last June, and so proud of the one you still are. You've endured a year of so many joys and sorrows! But I don't want to scoop your 18th birthday letter just yet. I'll fill you in on all of that soon. And hopefully I'll write that letter closer to your 18th birthday than your 19th. Right?!

I love you,

Mom