My @tumblr story was picked as one of their favorites! WHAAAT. http://t.co/M6cKhK03—
Kyera (@kyerabee) May 09, 2012

And to think I introduced her to Tumblr in May 2007. Yup, she will far exceed me in every way.

on airport shuttle to get my daughter!!!—
Thelma Bowlen (@thelmabowlen) November 13, 2007

Just landed in Orlando! In one piece! Hehe. Missing people but excited to see mom.—
Kyera Legaspi (@kyerabee) November 13, 2007

i felt like i gave birth again. only this time she's 17 and i didn't have to wait 9 months! i looove her sooo much.—
Thelma Bowlen (@thelmabowlen) November 14, 2007

falling into a deep and blissful sleep for the first time in 8 weeks.—
Thelma Bowlen (@thelmabowlen) November 14, 2007

All 7 lbs, 19 inches of Kyera 2 days after she was born.

Just had to borrow the title of one my favorite Rush songs. Geddy Lee sings about the swift passage of time and how important it is to savor each moment in Time Stand Still.

(Time stand still)
I’m not looking back
But I want to look around me now
(Time stand still)
See more of the people and the places that surround me now
Time stand still
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger

I’ve been pensive this year. I’ll talk about what’s going on in my head in my next posts but the larger part of my silence is processing the fact that Kyera is no longer a teenager. I find myself crossing my fingers more and praying more earnestly for her to make wise choices in every area of her life — spiritual, financial, emotional, physical, relational choices that will affect the rest of her life. (What does one understand of the “rest of their life” at 20?) In the same breath, I wonder if I’ve done a good job of raising her all by myself; if my many mistakes and shortcomings that she witnessed will help her make far less in her life.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that my child is her own person and that she will make her own choices with or without my advice. I’m letting go basically and sitting on the sidelines, holding my breath, letting out an occasional sigh, cheering her on enthusiastically, bending my knees that she will always do the right thing in God’s eyes.

I think this is why God gave me only one child. I don’t think I would have been emotionally capable of more!

Then again, more would have meant less devotion to the one and shared devotion with the rest. I don’t know, really. At this point, where I am a good four decades old, I am content and so grateful for all that God has allowed in my life. I’m humbled that He gave me such a beautiful, smart, talented human being to call my child.

I love you forever, bunny.

My widdle 20 year old baby.

Some things are a bit too private to talk about so I avoided it until I learned from it and can now discuss it here.

I was driving down Old Hickory Boulevard, admiring the leaves in their different stages of death — explosions of deep reds, yellows, greens, and oranges — as if holding on to dear life in bursts of color defying the inevitable, their shouts of, “We live! We live! We live! Look at us!” falling on the deaf ears of their fallen comrades littering the ground, brown and dry, when the prosaic cycle of life came to mind. It is a beautiful death, this being born a leaf: to be birthed, to live, to color, to wither, and then to die, not unlike us humans.

We come into this world, we live for but a sliver of time, bursting with life, and then we slip into eternity. Something I’ve been thinking of a lot these days. It probably has to do with my turning a new decade last July. I’m thinking more and more in terms of “the rest of my life” and “the second half of my life”; thinking more about the impact, if any, my life has had; thinking about how good, or bad, a parent I’ve been.

Me with blonde and red hair as 5B

I left behind a successful eighteeen year career as a freelance voice talent for radio and TV commercials in the Philippines and a fourteen year career in radio — the last five of which were as a morning show host — at the peak of our success. Interspersed within these were various stints in theater as an actress and as a freelance production assistant, and then a two year stint as a communications training manager. I left all of these behind to work full-time in a non-profit Christian ministry. I was there for two years before life shifted gears again when I came home to the U.S. in 2007.

Contrary to what I had been told about how easy it would be for me to get a job in the U.S., it took me sending out more than a hundred resumes and registering on countless online job search websites before I finally found work as a club concierge for a luxury property in Orlando, on the basis of being referred by a Filipino manager who worked there. Lesson learned? It really does matter who you know! Sometimes. Of course, God was working out a lot of character issues in my heart by allowing me to eat humble pie big time.

All of that pie ultimately led to an amazing turn of events that involved Twitter, Multiply, and a string of e-mails. After fourteen months as a concierge, the non-profit Christian ministry I worked for in the Philippines hired me for the Nashville office.

But that story is not what this blog is about. This one’s about coming to terms with my daughter’s becoming an adult.

We went through a major tug-o-war these past three weeks. On one side, her insistence on moving to the West Coast to study at an expensive art school; on the other, me and my raindrops of cost, cost, cost, and asking the tough questions of whether she is ready — spiritually, emotionally, mentally, financially — to leave.

I have so many stories to tell, both good and bad, and I realize that she will have to find and make ones for herself to tell some day. Hopefully, hers will be far happier and joyful and glorifying to God than the many twisted tales I wove before He found me. I pray that everything she’s learned about Jesus from the time she was five — and is still learning — will be all that will pull her through for the rest of her life.

So the other night I made the tough decision to let her go and learn what she needs to learn. That’s the plan.

And while I enter the Fall of my years, the leaves of my life explosions of deep reds, yellows, greens, and oranges, I pray her Spring will be beautiful and exciting and memorable and filled with lots of good stories for her to share with her children some day.

I know even without meeting her yet that one day I will have a granddaughter, who on the verge of turning 20 will be aching to spread her wings. If I’m still around, I will look my beloved offspring in the eye, smile, and mouth the words, “I love you. Now you know.”

But a visit to my OB-GYN coupled with a possible miscalculation on my part – plus a nervous mother who didn’t want anything bad to happen to her daughter (me) or grandchild (Kyera) – left me and my then-husband with no choice but to agree to the expensive operation.

Seeing that we were twenty, both unemployed at the time, and living under my mother’s roof, we didn’t have much of a say in the matter. So we went home to pick up my and the baby’s diaper bag, said good-bye to our bedroom, and promised it we would return with a baby. I turned to my husband and said, “Our lives will never be the same again. The next time we come home, we’ll be parents.”You don’t really no how much your parents love you until you have your own children. And the revelation doesn’t end at birth. Here I am eighteen years into parenthood – sixteen as a single mom – and I still find myself profoundly grateful for my parents, albeit they are both dead now.

A former boss summarized it perfectly. “Becoming a parent ruins you. You are done for. You don’t know how much you can love another human being until you have a child.”

Welcome to the most joyful destruction of life.

Now that Kyera’s eighteen, it’s only a matter of time before I will happily gloat over watching her ruin herself. She’s been warned that her children will be spoiled.

I can only hope that when that time comes, she will have been well-prepared. The one thing I know she will always know, is how well-loved she has always been.

Aaah, parenting. I’ve loved every second.

My last gig involved reviewing Creative and Olympus products for their local distributor. Too bad all the photos I took of the NU 107 Rock Awards disappeared along with the rest of my stolen iBook last December. The E-330 was the coolest camera I ever laid my hands on. Thank God it wasn’t taken along with my laptop.Soon after returning it, I was given an Olympus mu-725 SW to test-drive. We lovedet. And the fact that I had it for four months made us all the more attached to it.

Sigh. Our real camera is a crappy Kodak EasyShare CX 7220 2.0MP that I got Kyera for Christmas four years ago. Since trying out the Olympuses, she despises our poor digicam.

At least we both got to experience the wonders of Olympus.

Guess who learned how to use the Self-timer functions and got really good at it.

We need an Olympus for real; 17 needs a ballet school in the US; and I need a writing gig that will hopefully take me out of town and get my mind off waiting for the US Embassy to tell me if my daughter’s petition has been approved.

Le sigh. Le sigh. Le sigh.

I enrolled her when she was three but she hated it and gave up after a lesson. She asked to enroll again at the age of eight and lasted six weeks and one recital.

So when she asked me for lessons at the age of sixteen, I was hesitant. But wanting to be supportive, I had her do research on whether it was not too late for her to start.

She was told it wasn’t and enrolled the first Monday of September.K turned 17 last December and we gave her pointe shoes. Her father and I split the cost.

This week, she started with the Advanced Class and is loving every painful minute of it – the 500 crunches, the daily pointe class, the tandem stretching. She is obsessed with ballet. Always in dance forums and ballet sites online, and doing anything she can to get better, better, better.

Which is why I need to be sure that where we end up in the US will have a great ballet school for her to keep doing what she lives, breathes and eats (or not) for. I could not bear the thought of taking her away from something that is so important to her and which, remarkably feels the same way about her.

song playing on my windows player: she talks to angels by the black crowes