The Most Painful Gift

As a child time seemed to pass by so slowly, but with each year passed, time seemed to build on its own momentum and now as an adult I can’t seem to get a grip on it.  Time is an object rolling down a never ending hill that never reaches a terminal velocity.  I used to think it was such a cliched exchange to talk about how quickly time has flown by, like one second to you is longer than one second to me.  Though the concept is finite, the emotional aspects of time are completely fluctuant.

However, the beauty and pain of time was never so apparent than after I became a mom.  With the birth of my son, came a literal human measuring stick for the passage of time.  “The days are long, but the years are short,” truer words have never been spoken.  As a new mom, I would count the minutes down waiting for my husband to get home, a second set of hands, a chance to use the bathroom by myself, maybe even the possibility of a nap.  Each day, week, month and year would pass and we would faun over all the baby/toddler milestones, crawling, walking, and talking.  During those moments of course, we are so grateful for our gift of time, watching this little baby blob turn into a little guy with all sorts of sweet thoughts about the world.

But here’s the thing, we can’t possibly (and really shouldn’t) remember every second of every day of every week, so it feels like we all fell asleep one night and my son aged 4 years by the next morning.  And now next week, he is going to start public elementary school and I am feeling so resentful of time.  He is going to step on that little campus, and that will signal a new part of his life where he will gradually need me less and less - it just feels so unfair.

Me: You’re getting so big, stop growing.

Son: No I want to grow.

Me: I know I want  you to grow too.  

Heart: No you don’t!

Brain: Yes you do.

Son: Can I have a granola bar?

I think to myself at least once a day, “how did we get here, how are we already here, at this part?”  And for my son, he is thinking, “tomorrow feels like forever from now.”  His time is still slowly rolling down the hill being moved by breeze and wind, while mine feels like it can’t go any faster (and I am told it can and does).  And yet, I can’t wait to see what time has in store for all us.