It's raining and I feel like it's stealing little pieces of me - like some twilight of youth that takes away my breath -  and I see myself all over their faces and in her eyes and the way he crinkles his nose when he thinks something is really funny and I wonder what happened...where it all went...  Time: she is a fickle mistress.

They get lovelier and taller and brighter and I...I...Dear God, is that a grey hair???

I am terrified of getting older.  But I love to watch them grow.  Quite a pickle.

How did it happen?

We're waiting for the bus and this is the first day and it's already fall and too cool and wet to wear flip flops anymore.  Their backpacks are goodie loaded and shiny new and they don't care what those  jeans cost or that their shoes are already dirty.

Not long now and he'll sprout past me, that eldest with his wisdom gleaned from the Guinness World Records book and Uncle John's Bathroom Readers.  But, for now, he is the perfect height for hugging.  For resting my cheek against his hair.  For clinging to that last little bit of child before he's all man.  

And that one stuck between - that one who loves me loudest and hardest - that one who wishes school was nothing but a field and a ball - that one hugs like a tackle and grinds his face against my arm and is so sweet when he forgets to be hard.

Then there is she, that daughter blazing beauty from a sparkle that begins in her heart and covers the whole world with one little grin.  I'm quite sure she comes from the same place as rainbows.  She is JOY as surely as her middle name.

I watch them climb onto the bus - the big, the medium, and the small - and just like that summer is over and I'm two months older and we're back to 7:30 bedtimes and making lunches and early wake ups and homework.

They're gone.  I walk back to the house and my clothes are wet with rain and there, resting on the kitchen counter is a lunch box.  Sigh.  Here we go!