Once I was seven years old

No doubt you've heard this song.  The chorus gets stuck in my head, and the fact that my girl is seven surely makes it stick even harder.  To hear it sung is a reminder of this age, precious and alert at the same time.  Maybe like me, you remember being seven.  It was a happy time, before middle school taunts and high school drama and all the rest of it.

Once I was seven-years old, and I loved my second grade teacher.  I still remember her name: Mrs. Auprin.  She was pregnant and I asked my mom where babies came from.  After much dogging, she finally gave me a pretty approximate explanation about hugging that satisfied my seven-year old brain.  I remember my teacher putting a shoe box up high on a shelf to teach us about resisting temptation and our conscience.  There was a bag of popcorn in there that we eventually popped for the class, I suppose. 

Seven is waking up to the world but still firmly in childhood innocence for most kids.  The tooth fairy and santa still had their place in my world back then.  School was fun and life was good. Homework was either non-existent or finished quickly.  Play was my biggest priority.

Flash forward 35 years.  I've got my own seven-year old whose praises and quirks I've already sung for this age.  But I feel a sort of urgency to say how lovely it is to have this little person (who comes up to about my heart, height-wise) wrap her thin arms around me and say, I love you, mommy.  Can't get enough of it.  Never will be able to.  I keep fearing adolescence breathe its ugly sighs down on me and I sometimes want to suspend time at seven. 

Once she was seven-years old.  And she still is for two months.  And she loves to sing Katy Perry songs.  She devours comic books and Netflix and plays a little less with Barbie and Playmobil.  Her friends are her world and she wonders about marrying her best little male friend and begs me to ask her questions about their future life together.  She still loves to swing on her swingset and cuddle.  She wants to pick out her clothes more than before. 

But I can't ask her to stay seven forever, just as my parents couldn't freeze time for me either.  She is meant to go through all the stages, and I will find something beautiful and worthy in each one.  And maybe one day she will look back at seven and say, once I was seven-years old, and it was a happy year.  I guess that's the best I can hope for!