People say it goes fast, but in reality it goes achingly slow. When you are up at 3am cleaning vomit, changing sheets and soothing a sick child, the next day grinds along at the slowest possible speed. When a small child is piercing your skull with their screamy whine, while another one is crying and yet another is racing around the house with the pounding feed of a rhinoceros, everything seems to be happening in slow motion. When you are out in public, having finally sat down to visit with a long-lost friend and your baby's diaper leaks, sending poo running down the side of your leg, off the chair and onto the floor, time stands still.
And so it goes for the years of your children's infancy and toddlerhood, even sometimes into their school years.
What makes people say that the time with young children "flies by" is not the fact that it goes so fast when you're living it, but the intense sadness you have when it's over and the powerful longing to bring it back.
Why???? When you were living it, it seemed endless, timeless, grueling, difficult, a test of your endurance and your ability to function despite extreme sleep deprivation.
But we are human! And part of the human condition, one of the more forgiving parts that makes life so much more enjoyable, is our ability to forget: our astoundingly short memory for pain. As our babies grow and begin to walk independently, to describe their needs and wants, to take care of their own bodily functions, to clothe and feed themselves, we in turn begin to forget the difficulties of having a baby, of trailing after a toddler, of constantly monitoring a being that has no common sense and a seeming death wish. We forget that hefting the notorious "bigger than an ox" car seat and two tons of baby gear gave us carpal tunnel and bad backs. We forget that not sleeping for more than two hours at a time led us to mistakenly place frozen food in the fridge and leave the front door unlocked and buy nothing on our grocery list and made us cry at 5:30pm when a pat of butter fell on the floor. We so easily forget all that, all the misery, all the difficulty, all the feats of endurance.
All we remember is that adorable baby, the one who smiled rakishly in the half million pictures and videos we took. We remember the weight of a newborn in our arms, the smell of baby powder, the crinkle of a fresh diaper, little hands that wrapped around our big fingers, knees that had the most delicious dimples, thighs so impossibly gorgeous....
And when we remember, it seems like we didn't enjoy it enough. We didn't "seize the moment," we didn't glory in every smile or delight in every baby laugh or laud every baby step enough.
This is a trap. A cruel mind game we play with ourselves.
I am here to tell you--and me, mostly me--that we did our best. We did absolutely the best we could do. Some days were better than others, some moments lasted forever and some were better forgotten. In the midst of all the challenges, we
did enjoy our babies, our children, as they grew.
What we wish for is to remember it all, but remembering it all would destroy the gift we were given. That gift is the gift of remembering those things that delighted us, those spectacular moments, those beautiful pictures, those baby cheeks, those wonderful smells, the mercurial magic of childhood, without the bad moments. In our minds we stripped away everything else and remembered what was most important to us: the essence of each child's babyhood.
Today I am telling myself it's okay to be sad that my babies have all grown up from their babyhood. It's okay to mourn over the end of diapers, baby powder, tiny hands, pea-sized toes, gurgly laughs, wispy hair, faltering steps, exploratory touches, exclamations of first delight.
It's not okay to accuse myself of not enjoying it: I did enjoy it. And I also found it aggravating, annoying, terrifying, harrowing, painful, depressing and seemingly unending.
A few weeks ago I was outside with my daughter. We were looking for the chickens and I asked her where her chicken was. She turned to me and with a mixture of absolute certainty and pride, said: "He's over there, under that bush, doing his best!" Innately she recognized the importance, the higher purpose, inherent in doing one's best--even for an animal.
Now, when I have those days of sadness and self-doubt, I remember what my daughter said and remind myself that I'm doing my best. And it's really the very best that I can do.
