I’m terrified of an empty house, the echo through the halls and the dust underneath the beds. Where once there were toddlers afoot and babies galore – soon all of that will be no more.

I used to grow a garden, before that I grew babies.

And so much has changed that when I look around it’s hard to recognize myself most days. Where am I, really? Even the chairs we sit on are different, the house we live in is new, the babies I grew are growing and yet we still make the same mess. Each one of us trying a new color, a new canvas, for the same masterpiece.

I often wonder what’s next. All I’ve known my entire life is how to be with babies. I played house, made baby-books for my teddy bears; I was practicing how to be a mom before I was even out of diapers.

But we’ve long since passed the baby stage, we don’t even own a stroller anymore. And the tiny infant humans who I couldn’t wait to have are a distant memory. A lovely, sky gazing, best-thing-I-did-with-my-life, memory.

And it changed me. In ways I’m just now discovering … and I’m leaning into what’s next because of the happy soil we came from – we’re finally going to start to bloom.