Old

Outside today, weeding the garden, I very suddenly felt....old.
Not 'old' in the sense that my joints hurt or my knees popped when I stood up...Just...oldER?

Toby was playing beside me and we watched Opa (my Opa, Toby's Great-Opa) drive into the back yard to get a trailer. Toby said he was going to see what he was doing, I said sure.
He was gone for ages, so I checked around the corner to see things were ok, and he was waving Opa back to where the trailer was and then helped hitch it up, and then Opa put him in the car to drive through the field with a load of junk.
In the last few weeks I've let him do 'independent' things that I never would have dreamed of letting him do this time last year. Mostly because I know he's not going to go careening off the bridge, or trip over the front step now.
So, anyway, Here I am standing in the middle of the yard wearing slush pants over my pajama pants, with grubby skater shoes, a sweater, a scarf and a touque. An outfit I wouldn't be caught dead in a few years ago. An outfit I may have rolled my eyes at my mom for wearing.
And I'm watching my son walk away rom me to do another project and I don't feel a sense of panic that he needs to be supervised. I'm just....ok.
And it lead to this sudden feeling of feeling 'old'.
And then I'm thinking, maybe it has nothing to with age really, but more a sense of confidence.

I'm so used to feeling like I'm grasping at straws, both as a person and a mother. I had a kid right at the moment in my life where I was realizing that my adult-self was a different person than my teenage-self, and then I had to suddenly discover my mother-self and my single-self on top of all that.
So maybe I just feel 'old' because I finally feel confident that I have this thing figured out.
Maybe I'm feeling grown up because Toby is growing up and I don't feel tied down because I have to lug him everywhere. Maybe I'm feeling gown up because I feel like a mom, and not just someone who's raising a kid.

The wind blows around my legs, and I can't feel it because I've chosen to wear slush pants over my PJs. I smile to myself that I've made a good choice and kneel back down in the dirt to keep weeding.