You know that old adage about parenting: that it goes by very quickly but the days can feel so long? The person who first offered up that observation should not have been anonymous. She or he should have received all the adoring accolades available, because really, I can’t think of much that’s truer than this particular assessment of time.
I had one of those jolts when I was watching the Olympic closing ceremonies with my 11 year-old, Lucien. No question, we had a very fun Olympics; we got caught up in any number of sports (Lucien liked curling, go figure, bobsled and skiing of every stripe; I couldn’t have adored the figure skating more; Remy loved all speed events and the figure skating). You know what else I think we enjoyed? Snuggling up in bed and drifting off together: experiencing all those big WOW moments while remaining entirely cozy. So, when I was on the floor doing my evening stretches and Remy had conked out during the closing ceremony’s pageantry, I was in the midst of thinking about how nice it was to have a kid old enough—11—that the conversation was pretty interesting and we were reveling in a shared pleasure (not that gawking at construction sites when he was a toddler wasn’t a shared pleasure, because it absolutely was, but those pleasures represented a different kind of sharing). Lucien said, “You know I’ll be living at home for one more Winter Olympics, then I’ll be in college for the one after that.”
Kick me in the solar plexus, my love. I mean, actually, how great is that? How proud am I that he’s going to be an independent person—and he’s anticipating it with enthusiasm? Answer: I am over-the-moon about it, even now. I just hadn’t really considered that when we mark time by seasonal Olympics measure—every four years—the leaps are really big. Lucien recalled that four years ago, he was about Remy’s current age and Remy was barely three. He remembered watching the Games during a trip to Del Raye Beach, Florida with my mother in the funky flamingo and tropical bird décor hotel room at Crane’s Beach House. And I recalled—hadn’t until then—how determined he was to watch every event and how impossible it had been to get him to sleep…
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Just this morning, I looked down at my fingers and realized the two really “ouch-y” cuts on my fingers (both at the creases) were finally healing. I’d had this unfortunate run: my pinky got a big cut on the crease and then I burned the other fingers. It seemed like nothing when my fingers came in contact with the searing pan. A couple of days later, though, these angry, red, bloody sores appeared and for a couple of weeks, I’ve been healing in a manner that could only be called lugubrious (additionally I could say frustratingly slowly or simply painfully). Putting aloe on the sores didn’t do much, nor did antibiotic cream, nor silver cream, but however it went—air, bandage, creams, air—eventually, I looked down and realized that my fingers were actually on the mend. I marveled at what a relief it is not to be thinking about the thing that hurts, because it no longer hurts.
Kids aren’t in any way open wounds. That phenomenon, though, occurs—that I’m focused, I’m worried, I’m totally in it one—as does the corresponding one—I blinked and everything changed. I like those minor milestones, the ones that don’t make it to the baby books, the ones you couldn’t possibly remember the first time when, things like, my kid doesn’t need me to buckle the seat belt on the car booster seat or put the lunch in the backpack. For me, those are the most special ones, because they speak to how we unfurl into people and strengthen our independence muscles in our own ways. Hitting markers like first step ultimately mean less to me than started walking to school without needing to sit down midway between starting point and destination.
I have plenty of friends who mourn their children’s babyhoods or childhoods ending. Granted, I have a toddler, still, along with the teenager. So, maybe it’s having four kids span such a long period—14 to two—that keeps me from much longing.
Having held onto certain favorite baby clothes for a very long time (think, four kids all wore numerous items), as Saskia outgrows things, I’ve been offloading like crazy. Placing that first pile of cherished tiny togs into a bag to give away forever, I admit, tugged at my heartstrings just a teeny, tiny bit. I love babies! I gave myself a talking to, truth-be-told that basically went like this: If, after four babies, you’re wishing for more babies (and trust me, I was and am not), there’s something wrong with you (not you, reader who may want more than four kids, but me, overtired fortysomething mother of four talking to herself). Simply put: Get over it. And the truth is I’ve practically always had babies in my life, starting at age eight when I helped out in my elementary school’s daycare, through teens and twenties babysitting and hanging with friends’ kids and then as a parent. My darling little nephew, Ian, just hit the six-month mark (and I’m counting on another nephew or niece or two, just sayin’). Friends have babies (and they are kind enough to let me hold those little cute soft selves). More friends will have babies. Gosh, my babies may well have babies… My eldest pointed when the youngest finishes high school, he will be 30. I could become a grandmother and a just-turned empty nester at the very same time!
As I thought about the forever of those first months parenting a newborn—when sleep is a precious commodity producing one very long day punctuated by naps—and about the adolescent now in my midst and about the cuts on my fingers and all this on a blowy March morning promising spring, I remembered how, when I was sixteen, I started waking up early most mornings to go running. I can still recall this giddy mixture of darkness ceding to light and legs getting stronger and autonomy becoming mine, as if with the steps I claimed a hold on a world beyond childhood, like the young narrator in Faith Ringgold’s aching dreamscape, Tar Beach, claiming every building she flies over. I was besotted with the sensation.
So many experiences throughout life are ingested or inhaled like that: the late-night sessions with friends through my twenties, the free-fall that was meeting my dear husband long before he was a husband, the gift of time and space our eighteen-month, newlywed ex-pats-in-London odyssey, not the physical indignities of pregnancy but the unfathomable awe of person grown inside me, and hands held and illnesses weathered, and even loved ones lost and holding tight to others around that chasm of emptiness in an attempt to make it just a bit smaller.
I stopped running about a decade ago, because I figured if I kept running and lived a long time, I’d be unable, over the long haul, to sustain a body healthy enough for me to become stooped, white-haired old lady walking all over the place (and if I am going to be an old lady, that’s how I hope it goes). Yesterday, I could articulate it to myself: I’m greedy for life. I know I’ll miss the kids the way I missed those somewhat melancholy but very comforting late afternoon hours spent at the empty playground near my father’s old house when I was a teenager, mostly swinging. Those memories hold a spot. I wished for some of what I have now: a family, a true love. I’ll miss my kids when the house empties out, and yet, I believe I’ll be so amazed at the people they are—unfurled, strong independence muscles in action, doing, being, loving—that I don’t see how I could be overtaken by sadness (pangs, sure, but there are always pangs). I think and hope that I’ll remain glad for the whole thing.
