Senior Year Motherhood — The Pivot Between Childhood and Grown-Up Dreams

It’s when they’re almost ready to catch their own stars, but they’ve outgrown chasing fireflies.

All that’s left is the stardust in a mother’s eyes — and an awe for the privilege of holding their hands beneath that sky at all.

Once Upon This Friday Night…

Once upon this Friday night, in a high-school auditorium not so far away, I looked up at the stage where Peter and the Starcatcher was about to begin.

Alexandra’s last high-school play.

Senior year motherhood has a way of sneaking up on you —  not with fanfare, but with fairy dust. The kind that settles on your nose before you tear up and realize a moment has become a memory.

And right there, in the loud conversations swirling all around me, all vying for my attention, I said to myself, “So this is it. Opening night of her last senior play.“

But if I did that, I’d never understand all the firsts that came before — the firsts that slipped into lasts before I even knew they were gone.

The Tape That Plays Backwards and Forwards

It rewinds to 1st grade, where Alexandra played The Little Red Hen. She performed twice, once for her own class and once for the other homeroom when their Hen had to leave for vacation. (I kid you not.) She jumped in and performed as if she’d been rehearsing with those kids all along.

Back then, we thought it was adorable — and honestly, we were borderline thrilled that the other Hen went MIA.

Now, I’m grateful Alex found those pictures, the ones to remind just how precious she was.

Then the tape fast-forwards to 8th grade, where she was Belle in Beauty and the Beast. She made the perfect Belle, without any help from me. And there we were, sitting in the audience, completely forgetting it was her final middle-school performance — too enthralled with seeing it for the first time.

I didn’t always realize how thankful I was to be the one in the wings. To be her wing-mother.

And then the tape clicks forward to now — senior year when she tells me:

“You don’t need to come to both shows. It’s the kind of play you only need to see once.”

As if that were possible.

As if anyone in senior year motherhood would blink away the chance to see their daughter’s last school play.

And that small pushback made me realize what I was feeling wasn’t just another last.

It was a doorway between eras—

the moment when childhood magic shifts into grown-up dreams, and where her parents stand in the threshold, holding both.

The Threshold Between Worlds

This is senior year motherhood:

Standing with one foot in childhood magic and the other in adult reality.

This weekend, I watched a play about never growing up performed by a daughter who somehow already has.

She’s a captain. She has an English accent. I can’t take my eyes off of her — even though, for most of the play, she’s being held in captivity.

And I — I’m learning to let go of the childhood dreams, so my memories don’t clip her wings as she reaches for her adult ones.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating:

It’s when they’re old enough to catch their own stars but too grown to chase fireflies. And all that remains is the stardust in a mother’s eyes — the awe of witnessing the transformation unfold right in front of me.

This is the pivot moment.

(Okay, yes, the tango lessons with Alex are rubbing off on me.)

And right there, between the child she was and the woman stepping forward, I see the stardust trail glowing.

If I listen closely, this moment has a sound.

It’s so quiet I can almost miss it. A low hum. And, yes, there it is again: the glow of a firefly still flickering inside me.

For every carpool, every costume, every night I sat in a too-hard auditorium seat and watched her become herself — one firefly, one star, one brave step at a time.

That’s the stardust we senior-year mothers sweep out of our eyes.