Parenthood is fleeting

Like Clark Kent and Superman, my husband and I are almost never in the same place at the same time. Our lives are in a state of perpetual agitation. We have three children; two in school and one chomping at the bit for JK.  We also have far too many extracurricular activities for all five of us. Like grocery shopping. A snapshot of our lives this morning would capture potty training seats, mile-high stacks of laundry and a front hall containing a minefield of rubber boots, running shoes and gym bags.  Everything feels unfinished, untidy and chaotic; even breakfast this morning had all those elements! 

It’s hard to pull back and see the whole picture when I’m only looking at the messy bits all over the floor. What will the image look like a couple of years from now? Will my sunny eldest have become adolescent and gloomy, or dyed her beautiful red hair? Will my level-headed, centered six-year-old have become less confident and more impulsive?  Will my son have finally relinquished his profound love of dirt or will that be a lifelong affair? How do I slow it down, to enjoy more fully these brilliant streaks of light and energy that are my children?

This particular morning, in our usual haste to get out the door to school, my almost four-year-old son whacked his face and came to me for comfort.  He crawled into my lap, looked at me with his big teary eyes and said: “can you hold me like a baby?” I lifted his legs, cradled his neck and shoulders and pulled him up close. I kissed his forehead. “Now rock me like a baby,” he instructed. His older sisters broke into a teasing version of Rockabye baby, but he and I had a private, eyes-locked moment while he sucked his thumb (still a constant companion) that sent me straight back to babydom.

Three years is not very long, but it felt like a lifetime ago when I held my son as a baby in my arms, and he perused my face with those serious baby eyes, drinking me in as I did him. Eternity unfolds in those moments and you let it wrap around you like a cloak.  You savour it, probably because it is 4 o’clock in the morning and you’re too dazed to do much else, but because you savoured it, you can remember it years later when you need it.

The nature of babyhood so enthralls parents that we have no choice but to spend a lot of quality time with our child, time that might otherwise be used for inconsequential things like sleeping, eating or taking a shower. These other activities become downgraded temporarily, just so the baby can stop crying and get a clean diaper, or feed for two minutes and take a five minute break and demand to be fed again. We don’t realize it, but it is training for later in that child’s life, when we assume he is more independent of us, but he still needs to know that we do hang on his every word, and that we are deeply satisfied with every one of his successes. And that we still do feel every one of his boo-boos.

How do I cause the slowdown of time? I need to make sure I see who my child is in her own life and what the world looks like from her perspective.  I need to remember each set of serious baby eyes as they were at 4 a.m., but I also need to see the sparkles that each bit of maturity brings. I need to regularly, daily, make time for each of my kids, individually.

Did I take the time this morning to soothe my child’s hurt and clear space for him to be comforted “like a baby”? Yes, I did. Did I worry that we’d be late, or that the kitchen was a wreck or even that he was being a tad manipulative?  Well, perhaps a little, but I still did it and we were not late. Maybe I do have the power to stop time, just long enough, when it’s needed. Superman did!

2011