They Call Her Shaeffer Spunk

Having a baby at 31 is a far cry from having a baby at 21. Especially when it’s your 5th baby in 10 years. You’re near-death tired, you’re jaded by a decade of mothering, you’ve been there and done that. Multiple times.

First kids get their parents’ best energy and worst parenting. Everything is a big deal. Everything is documented. Everything is monumental. First kids are kept from getting hurt or missing out or feeling uncomfortable. Expectations for the first kid exceed the moon, and they are our sun.

Last kids get their parents’ worst energy and best parenting. Or at least their most experienced parenting. Everything is underplayed and underplanned. Documentation is sparse and suspect. Milestones are more mundane. Expectations for the last kid don’t even make it out of this solar system. They’re unimpressively down-to-earth.

You keep the first kid from getting hurt; you keep the last kid from getting killed. Parenting the first kid happens in hyperzoom: you couldn’t focus in any closer if you tried. Parenting the last kid transpires in pano: perspective is expansive and there’s so much more than their short life in the picture.

The baby turns 9 today. 9 is a seemingly harmless birthday. Even for first kids. But 9 is secretly duplicitous. It’s halfway to grown and halfway to flown. It’s the second half of the longest, craziest game of your life. It’s closer to the end than it is to the beginning.

9 years with Shaeffer has summoned light out of darkness. Filled years with laughter and melody and passion. Gifted hope and healing and second chances.

Her life force is incomparable: she exists wholly, fully, and deeply in everything she is or does.

She demands space to move and be: her courage to expand gives me hope for future generations of women.

Her creativity overflows into all she touches: every day is a song, a dance, a celebratory production of what it means to be young and alive.

What energy lacks in me as I wearily, sometimes half-heartedly, parent the caboose of the ultimate crazy train, Shaeffer makes up for in spades. Her boundless energy and undimmable spark culminate in the most glorious grand finale.

She may have gotten our worst energy but she gives her best energy to the world. In all she does, in all she is. She’s the conclusion, el fin, the last kid. They call her Shaeffer spunk. Forever may she reign.