Motherhood has made me soft

I've lost my edge.

Okay, I'm not sure I ever had much of an edge. But whatever I had melted away to the strains of Abba's "Slipping through my fingers" while watching Mamma Mia last night.

It's a pretty good film, once you get over the spastic way Meryl Streep plays her role. And Julie Walters alone is worth the viewing. It also helps to be a closeted (slightly fanatic) Abba fan. (Let the record show that it was my husband who identified Benny Andersson playing the keyboard in the "Dancing Queen" scene.)

But then Meryl started helping her daughter prepare for the wedding, all the while singing lines like this:

"Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while."

Have you ever listened to the lyrics of this song? The tears started welling up in my eyes immediately. And then tears were streaming down my face. Literally.

"Do I really see what's in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time"

I must be out of my mind. Will is not even two. Two! She doesn't have a schoolbag. And I spend almost every waking minute with her, most of which I treasure, but sometimes are enough to drive nostalgia off its own bend.

(I refer here to a screaming cage match over nap yesterday. I won. I had to eat a Weight Watchers cake immediately afterward while tweezing out new grey hairs, but I won.)

Yet somehow, I look at Will and I do feel like it's slipping through my fingers. That she's already moving away from me and becoming her own person. Which will be wonderful and amazing and is exactly what I want.

But I will never know this older Will the way I know my baby girl right now.

(Great. Now I need another piece of cake. Or a drink.)