I had a bittersweet moment with YaYa today.
After school we braved the gray, rainy afternoon to deliver her Girl Scout cookies in the neighborhood. I don't know why, but she asked if I would carry her home on my shoulders. No, I said, an answer I repeated several times over the course of our walk.
"Why not?" she asked.
"Because we're both getting too old for it," I said.
But, a block from home I gave in and put her on my shoulders.
"It's kinda scary up here," she said. "It's been a long time."
"It'll probably be the last time too kiddo," I said. "You're getting too big for this."
"I know," she said.
"Does that make you sad?" I asked.
"Yeah, kinda. There's a lot of 'last times' lately. This year was the last time I could go to the pumpkin farm at school, it's the last piggyback. A lot of things are ending."
"That's just part of growing up baby. There's gonna be more and more things that are the 'last time' for you as a kid. But there's going to be a whole lot more 'first times' to balance it out. You'll see."
"I guess. Will you still buy me a pumpkin though? I don't want to see LuLu and Ginger do their's if I don't have one."
"Sure," I said. We were climbing my front porch steps.
"You should tell Mom to take a picture Daddy," she said. "This is the last time you'll give me a piggyback ride."
And that pretty much kicked me in the gut.
"Wellll," I said. "Maybe it won't be the 'last' time just yet."
