What do I want to be when I grow up?

I’ve just been pondering all the moms I know, in the Woodinville MOMS and elsewhere, and all of their different titles. Every one of these friends of mine puzzles, to some degree, over how to spend the most “quality time” with her kids and still keep up some form of “career” as well, or at least the dream of one day having a career. There’s the ‘fulltime working mom’ (with kids in school and daycare) all the way to the ‘stay at home mom’ (kind of a misnomer as she’s hardly ever staying in any one place, including home, for very long). And we all become jugglers, fluidly defining our roles as moms and individuals.
As the kids grow up, they go through various stages which basically are leading toward their independence. That means our job as mom, if we’re doing it well, is on a track of planned obsolescence. It may seem so far off for most of us (even me whose kids are 9 and 6), but all childhood milestones-- learning to smile, crawl, talk, potty train, dance, do calculus--they all lead eventually to the same end: a grown up person.
Although we rejoice over our kids’ accomplishments, we also have our fleeting moments of yearning for things to never change. But that’s another great thing about being a mom: it forces you to continually accept change and roll with it. When my oldest daughter can go from an innocent, perfect newborn to a brilliant young scientist, runner, musician, and contributing community member in the space of TEN short years, I realize how quickly time marches on and how much growing and changing a person can do every year.
It’s inspiring really. If our kids can grow so much, can’t we too? Well, you might be saying, “we're not kids anymore, Cathrin”. But I don’t really buy that whole theory that kids learn better than adults. I believe with the right attitude we all have lifelong potential to learn. For example, I didn’t start learning French until I was 20, an age some “experts” might call “too late”. But I speak French fluently now, and my accent is even quite good. Five years after I started learning the language, I had the pleasure of astounding one of these so called language experts. Listening to my accent, this Linguistics professor kept insisting, “surely you had a parent or an aunt or someone who spoke French to you as a child? A playmate? A neighbor? Anyone? But I did not. He was so sure of his expert research that I don’t think he ever believed me.
All this is to say that I do not know what I want to be when I “grow up”, but I do believe that there’s nothing more fun than plotting out some dreams and plans and going for them step by step. Being a mom has taught me to change and grow alongside my blossoming kids. They aren’t afraid of trying new things. They’re not afraid of failing or of wasting their time. They just naturally go for learning with gusto. If we also have passion for a subject plus time, there is no end to what we can do. And the thing about the kids becoming more independent is it gives us more time to figure out what we are passionate about to also go for learning it.