It has been a funny old month, nothing fast-paced or mind-blowing. A sudden realisation felt a bit like walking into a lamp post (minus the embarrassment) on my route to school every day.

I have noticed subtle and profound changes in Big Bear. I do not know whether it’s a coming of age or a hormonal thing but she doesn’t act or think like a child anymore. Her rebuts – more often than I care to admit – are logical and leave me speechless. I pride myself on my ability to use words, but this bear has me floored.

As her shoulder creeps up to meet my shoulder, and her thinking runs parallel to mine (with a good number of unruly detours), I am thankful that she still wishes to hold my hand on our way home from school; albeit with conversations that have become more mature.

It’s not a constant tirade of what happened in her books; she wants to talk about her day or what she saw on the news, and the change – seemingly overnight – leaves me with a sense of amazement at how 10 years feel like a blink of an eyelid. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not sad, nor am I nostalgic, but am thankful for the chance to walk alongside her.

Coming to this realisation has made me relish Middle Bear, who for some reason I haven’t been able to connect with recently. I need to fill her cup, but don’t know how to. I can take her meltdowns a little bit better because I can recall that it was just a short while ago that I couldn’t get through to Big Bear. Calming myself before I react to her meltdowns takes a lot of time and truckloads of conscious effort.

In the meantime, Little Bear- aka wild child – continues his craziness, and would probably drive his Little Tykes car off the cliff (or more like into our back stream) if I left him loose. His desire to connect with the people that he sees around us is heart-warming and brings a lot of light into our lives.
In the interest of preserving the dignity of my children, one of my baby Bears, when sneezing from the back end has taken to saying

‘Alhamdulillah’ – the blessed words that one says when they sneeze from the front end. What started as a seemingly polite way to acknowledge an impoliteness has warped into a loud proclamation of the verbal and non-verbal sort.

My children make me laugh and cringe all at once. The baby Bears for all their eccentricities bring with them a sense of the simplicity of life. In my quiet realisation of the swift passing of time, as I walk alongside Big Bear, I pray that the shared values that have seeped through can be sustained through her teen years.

I will seek, create and preserve safe spaces, amongst my bubble and outside of it to ensure that I keep learning.
I find myself stronger for it.

Aasiya I Versi
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