Do you see pictures of your friends grandchildren when you are at home with little one still worrying how they are being treated at school and eating their lunch?

I’m one of those moms. I’m still tying shoe laces, changing diapers and tackling homework from grade school, and those around me are seeing their children get married and have babies.

It’s such an odd spot to be in, honestly; you don’t quite fit in with the ones twenty years younger than you with small kids, but can’t even imagine your children’s future, all grown up and making their own lives, yet. It’s this blank void of being a parent, nearly 50 years old, and having children still in grade school.

Don’t get me wrong-I don’t regret my decision. I’d have been a horrible parent in my 20s! I was no where near responsible enough and couldn’t nor didn’t want to be married then. I could not, in a million years have pictured the life I live now, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

With age there are trade-offs; you are wiser, but it seems harder (energy-wise) to keep up. You are more patient, but find the world our children growing up in so vastly different one than the ones we grew up in.

The nights of playing till past dark, blocks away from home under the streetlights seems to all but have disappeared. Trusting children to be who-knows-where for hours on end are over. Even daily ice cream trucks that roamed our streets are a thing of the past.

We have to keep and ear to the ground, and eagle-eyes on our children today. We worry about “stranger danger” in ways unimaginable when we were young.

And to top it off, many of us have parents of our own that may be elderly, like I do, and burning your candles on both ends.

But what I never imagined that even though I started late, I love my children. I love that they look up to me for the guidance I once received and watching them grow from babies, to toddlers, to bright kids with a whole life in front of them! It’s an amazing journey with no maps, no instructions, and sometime driving completely blind.