One of the qualities of homeschooling that I loved was how kids of different ages spent time together. There were not the artificial dividers of grades, and whole packs of children would race around the fields when families gathered. 

This week I had the pleasure of joining a mixed age event. Mothers across the spectrum, from those who have birthed, breastfed and mostly launched their brood to women holding or pregnant with their first child. We broke into clusters to talk about this odyssey called motherhood: the gratitude, the groveling, the surprises and sweetness. One woman told a story about her very young child's awareness of her grandmother's presence, the one who died twenty five years ago. Another described her own shift in seeing her seven year old come down after bedtime, just to ask a few more questions. It was not a stalling tactic. He was curious, and the interruption to her quiet evening offered a window into how he thinks. 

I have more regard for young mothers than I did when I was one. Their dedication floors me, their incessant watchful care leaves me in awe. A woman whose toddler has a list of foods as seemingly innocuous as bananas that could send him into anaphylactic shock, lives in a constant state of vigilance. Once when he touched a pumpkin seed the side of his face swelled up. An epi pen is never far away. 

The purpose in all of us being in one room was to thicken the strings of connection. Would those of us who enjoy enough sleep be willing to take a frantic call in the middle of the night? Might someone who has the luxury of always drinking her coffee hot like to knock on the door of an exhausted young mother, bringing her favorite beverage? Conversely, would a weary mom of a toddler, still in her sweatpants at sundown, be open to the gift of dinner in a basket?

Those inquiries were laid before us, the invitation to cross the invisible divide between young and old. I am numbered among the old. Yet against all odds it seems I once was young. Perhaps there is something of substance I can offer to a millennial whose reading list has shifted from novels to Jan Brett. I know for sure and certain that they have much to offer me.