Remember the song everyone used to sing at 21st birthday parties?
“21 today, 21 today
He’s/she’s got the key to the door
Never been 21 before!”
Well the words took on a different meaning on Saturday when my eldest child turned 21.
I was on my regular “saving lives” walk with friends …
And I missed an 8am call from Jenny upstairs.
Jenny had locked herself out of her apartment. Her spare key hangs on a hook in my hallway.
When I didn’t answer her frantic text message, she hammered on my front door until the eldest blearily opened it.
While 8am is verging on lunchtime for me, it is the middle of the night for the eldest, who tends to cook, shower and sculpt from around midnight to 2am.
When I belatedly saw the message from Jenny my heart sank. Of all the days for her to get locked out, did it have to be the morning of the eldest’s 21st?
Fortunately I’d left a card and a French pastry on the kitchen bench, which helped ease the pain of early rising.
On Saturday night we went out for a Japanese banquet dinner that included the sashimi tacos you may recall me raving about a few months ago.
O.M.G they are amazing!! Possibly one of my fave dishes of all time.
The eldest is not a party person, so that was the extent of the celebrations, other than blowing out the candles on a cake … that they had made for themselves at midnight.
Twenty one years old. Wow. They were most beautiful baby I’d ever seen … I am biased, of course …
Though perhaps not in this hilarious pic …
Ah, the joys of introducing solids …
I also love the haircut similarities in this before and after …
The eldest will be leaving me soon to move to Melbourne.
I will be a solo empty nester.
My heart aches at the thought of having both kids living out of home, but every parent faces it eventually.
I just wasn’t expecting it to be so soon.
They grew up in the blink of an eye and there are no second chances with their childhoods.
I can’t wind back the clock and mother them better.
So many regrets and recriminations.
But what’s done is done. And life goes on.
Song of the day: New Order “True Faith”
housegoeshome 
in a past life I just kept an extra key tucked in above the door….sneaky huh? and I just told the neighbors I liked that if they were stuck to feel free to borrow my apartment if they needed, always beer in the fidge….every so often I’d find a few of them that had taken me up on that, and well, soon there’d be a party….