They warned me I would be missing my high school years..

When I was younger… much younger (more than a decade ago that is), I was told many many times by my teachers that I would be missing my high school years (thus I had to enjoy them now, while they lasted).
I’m pretty sure that included homework and though I was a pretty decent student (mostly A’s – except math, I went through my entire high school life hating math), I really didn’t think I would miss being in high school… I went through College thinking how wrong my teachers were. I sure did not miss high school…
I could have probably gone through my entire life thinking how wrong they were and how I was not missing being in high school except… it finally hit me.
I do miss being in high school… I don’t miss the actual school, but the time period I spent being a high school student, and that’s probably what they meant anyway.

So today I realized that I miss waking up in the morning, my only care in the world being homework and what to wear in gym class. I miss coming home to an already made hot meal, clean and ironed clothes in my closet that I did not put there, nothing more worrying than researching an essay or preparing for a test…
This all happened to me during my high school years… so in a sense, yes I am missing high school… I am missing myself at that age and the wonderful freedom I had, though as a typical teenager, I thought I didn’t have quite enough of it (freedom). As I will tell my children one day, with freedom comes responsibility.
It’s a trade-off really. You trade one thing for a piece of freedom. i.e. You can have a car and be allowed to sit your driver’s exam, but then you have to wake up an hour earlier each morning to drive your younger siblings to school…And it goes from there… You can stay up as late as you want at night, but you probably have to be making your own money by then, which means you will be working in the morning which means you are trading your sleep hours for staying up late…

I am entering this mother-hood thing with the “knowledge” it won’t be easy. Of course never having two newborns that I am totally responsible for, cry and claw for my attention at the same time, I do not exactly know how difficult it will be (and also how rewarding) but I will try to enter it with the high school attitude.
Yes it may be hard, but later in life something harder will happen (like, oh I don’t know, twins in puberty??) that will make me miss and appreciate a little too late, the earlier days, when they were small and defenseless and I could just please them with a clean diaper, a bottle and a squeaky toy… (instead of cell phones, brand name clothing and cars!!)

Or if they were fighting, just picking one under each arm and marching away… try doing that with a couple of 80 lbs teenagers!! I really need to write all this down so I will remember especially on bad days…
Instead of “Baby’s Room” on their door maybe I should put “It could have been worse” and you know what? It really could have… No matter how bad you think you have it…. There is someone else out there right now, who has it worse…

So my advise for the day? Before you go missing it… enjoy it now that you can. I truly believe happiness comes from looking back and having no regrets…