A week ago today my baby turned thirty. Thirty years old. Thirty years since I gave birth to my last child. No matter how you look at it, thirty years is a long time.
Obviously I can no longer use the excuse that I’m “trying to lose the baby-weight” when in actuality I weight about fifteen pounds more than when I delivered him. He weighed seven pounds, fourteen ounces. Subtract the weight of the other associated birthing goo and the truth is revealed that I have found a bit more than I lost when he was born. You do the math. They are numbers that try to define us; weight and age.
I remember when I was a kid, thirty seemed ancient! In fact, I can remember crying myself to sleep when my Dad turned twenty-nine because I knew the next year he would turn thirty, be old and probably die. Luckily for me that didn’t happen.
As a teenager, the cry of youth was “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” At fourteen, it was more than half my lifetime away. The irony was that my own parents were only in their mid-thirties at the time!
At thirty, my “baby” is finishing the last push on his doctoral thesis. He posted that he was on his “last push” and a friend commented, “Are you pregnant?” He replied that metaphorically he was and indeed he has been. The gestational process of this paper has been a long one; even an elephant could have dropped at least two calves in the time he’s been working on it. It has been a journey of hard work, study, research and thought on his part and a great deal of prayer on mine. When he finishes and becomes “Dr. Andrew Scott Waugh, PhD” he will be the third in his line to have embarked on the effort and the first to receive the prize.
To say that I am in awe of this event and any part I may have played in this achievement as his mother is an understatement. Through his life, I have learned at least as much if not more from him than he ever could have from me. I like to think I just guided him through the early part of his life, although some pushing was required. He could be stubborn or more kindly put, dedicated to his position.
In a few short weeks he will defend his dissertation and then move up to Washington State to begin teaching as a visiting Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department. My little one. I don’t know how he could be thirty and almost a PhD. He will always be my “Little Sweetie”; the baby who was full of laugher and smiled and flirted with little old ladies in the grocery store from his perch in the shopping cart seat.
Although at times it seems like the years have flown by, it is mostly because they were so full and rich. I’m sure in ten years, when he turns forty, I’ll be writing the same lament, “How can my baby be so old?” but I’ll really be thinking,” How can I be so old?”
Numbers. Huh!