Oh, the children--they grow up!

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.

Incensed

I was two weeks post surgery when I got the call that my Grandmother had just had two strokes. She's the closest thing I've ever had to a mother and I desperately wanted to see her again before she died--and, from what I was told, it looked like the end was near. Talking it over, Jim and I decided that we would leave as soon as I was well enough and he had a break in his classes.

So two days after the doctor released me to drive, Jim and I packed up the family and began the long drive to Vermont. Thankfully, for my early birthday present, Pat cleaned out the van and helped me pack up everything our family of five would need in the Deep North.

There wasn't much I needed to bring other than clothes, some good books, my knitting and one fir-scented candle that I lovingly and carefully transported over 600+ miles. A good candle can soothe the soul and it's always nice to have the scent of Christmas in December. Also, the cabin we stay in is a converted hunting camp. The children call it "our cabinet" and it's not too much bigger than that: three "rooms" separated by walls in some places, but not by doors. That's part of the beauty of it, and another reason why a scented candle would be a useful thing.

One night during our stay at the cabinet, Jim came to bed and as we sat there reading I noticed a very strong perfume scent.
"Are you wearing perfume?" I asked, starting to sniff around for the origination of the odor.
"No!" he said as he self-consciously rubbed his hands together.
I grabbed his hands and sniffed them: the strong scent of pine emanated from them.
"Why are your cuticles green? Is that wax? Why do you smell like my candle?" I shot out of bed and into the kitchen where my candle sat on the table...only it wasn't my candle any more. Sticking two inches up out of the middle was one of those white emergency taper candles and the green wax from MY candle looked like it had been regurgitated by a chipmunk and piled up around the emergency candle.

Here's something you may not know about me: when I get really upset or angry, my voice reaches octaves so high only dogs can hear it. Instantly I reached that pitch, rounding on Jim.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY CANDLE? YOU RUINED MY CANDLE!"
I was livid, furious, turning red and purple and screaming at a pitch so high I could hardly hear myself.

Without moving, Jim replied, "If you had just waited two hours, you never would have known that anything had happened to your candle. I fixed it!"

"YOU FIXED IT? YOU DIDN'T FIX ANYTHING! YOU BROKE IT!"

"If you calm down and wait a while, you'll see that it will be fine," he said, returning to his book.

Eventually the vein in my throat stopped pulsing, the emergency candle burned down to the green wax and the candle reconstituted itself. Sort of.

The next night, we were again reading when Jim got up and went into the kitchen. Two minutes later I heard a thump, a crash and the tinkle of delicate glass breaking.

I didn't even get up. I knew what had happened.

"Did you break my candle?"

"Don't worry--I can fix it!" Jim replied from the kitchen.

At that point I resigned myself to the reality that the candle was no more and I went on reading. It couldn't possibly get worse....

I couldn't possibly have been more wrong.

For dinner that night, Jim had made himself spaghetti with a mackerel tomato sauce. He "fixed" my candle by replacing its glass housing with the tin can from the mackerel.

I now had a mackerel-infused fir scented candle in a tin can. I resisted the urge to get up and hurl it out of the window.

When I calmed down *again*, I told this story to my family. My Aunt Sarah listened intently, no sign of surprise on her face and, when it was over, she looked calmly at Jim and asked, "What was going through your mind the first time you messed with the candle?"

We all laughed...until we realized she was serious: she really wanted to hear the answer. "Because it seems to be something about men and candles," she continued. "They can't help but touch them. All my boys did. And I want to know what it is that makes you do it."