It just occured to me, why our first born has grown recently attached to me. I think on some level she knows, she knows our time is growing short. Kindergarden is coming, school all week, full days replacing lazy listless ones at home. We will no longer spending hours playing games, play fighting, watching cartoons, watching movies. I think she knows that this time that we now have is coming to an end. She knows something else awaits her and instead of diving forward or hanging back, she is making most of what we have left. Come september, this version of our daughter will be gone from us, replaced with someone bolder, smarter, more independent. And knowing this deep within her, certainly not on a conscious level, but aware nonetheless of the years we’ve spent in relative isolation, fall mornings, winter afternoons and spring days, she is telling me, that it has mattered to her, that for now, it will always matter.