Today is the last day that Ruby will ever be four years old. That’s it. The end. Finito. Bye bye. No re-dos, no do-overs. Hope you enjoyed it, ’cause it’s gone forever. At least that’s how I am looking at it. She is quite excited.
The problem with kids is that they want to grow up. Sadly, the problem with grown-ups is that they all wish they could be kids again. Man, remember being four? Yeah, me neither. Not really. But it sounds awesome! You are learning so much stuff every day! The world is a giant new place full of wonder and possibility, and it is all for you! Ruby is learning to read. She can write her name pretty well at this point. She can sound out almost all of the reasonable words in the English language (seriously, who decided that Hite should be spelled Height?) and with these new skills come new opportunities. Being four was awesome.
She has some freedom. We let her play outside in the yard by herself (of course we can see her through the window), and she often gets to choose things, like what she wears, what toys she will play with, and what kind of jelly she has on her PB&J for lunch. Freedom and control, as much as any four year old can have. But she is also fairly free of responsibility. Not quite old enough to be entrusted with “chores,” yeah there are expectations, but I think she is currently in a pretty sweet spot of high freedom and low responsibility that will not be matched again until the summer after her senior year of high school.
Tomorrow, it’s all changing. We got her a special piggy bank for her birthday, with four slots for spending, saving, investing, and giving. She’s going to start getting an allowance, and she is going to have to start earning it. Easy, five-year-old type chores, to be sure, but it will be a shift. She is going to start kindergarten in the fall. She’ll be there all day, five days a week. This is the beginning of a schedule that she will keep until she is 18. It’s all changing.
I’ve tried to tell her this week to enjoy her last few days of being four, but she rolls her eyes at me impatiently, as if to say “Yeah, I know I’m going to be five soon. And it will be awesome! Stop being such a downer Dad.” I don’t want to be a downer, but I want to make sure she appreciates the time that she does have to be a kid. I want her to slow down and enjoy the now, without trying to rush ahead to the then. In short, I want the impossible.
Honestly, she is only turning five. She has plenty of years left to be a kid, and I am just being crazy. I am aware of this. But I know how fast it goes. Everyone tells you how fast it goes, and you believe them, but you can never fully understand them until you are right in the thick of it. And now I know. I know that she is growing up so fast, and doing new things, and making friends at school, and going out on her own, and I know that it is right and well and good. I’m just not ready for it. It’s a lucky thing then that she is.