“The days are long but the years are short” – so goes the saying about parenthood. And there’s truth in it.
Some days feel interminable and relentless. The days punctuated by toddler rage or sickness. The days of scraping scrambled eggs off the floor while both my kids wail about the things they need (or want). The days where I feel I’m crawling to the 7.30 p.m. finish line, silence, a chance to collapse on the sofa and zone out with Netflix as though I’ve just completed an Ironman.
But then I find myself mindlessly scrolling through photos of my kids most nights (anyone else?), and I realize that without my noticing, they are changing— imperceptibly on a day-to-day basis, but unbelievably, irrevocably over the weeks and months.
My younger daughter is already the age her “big” sister was when she was born—and is no longer a baby but a little girl getting to grips with speaking, hair finally long enough for a top-knot, an assured sense of her own fashion choices, and the ability to have us all in stitches over dinner (when did she become so funny?!).
The older one is now at school, brimming with opinions and facts and the tiny, burning truths of her world. Not long ago, we worried she was never going to speak; now sometimes, we struggle to get her to stop. She has passionate likes, passionate dislikes, and a very clear view of how the world should be. She refuses to accept any help with getting dressed, wants to prepare her own breakfast, and wants a unicorn for her next birthday (“a real one though, mummy, ok?”).
Soon, neither of them will want to be picked up anymore. Soon, they will prefer to spend their Saturday afternoons with their friends rather than making Play-Doh pancakes with me. And one day soon I’ll be lying awake at 1 a.m., not because someone has shouted ‘“MUMMMMYYYY!!” but because I’m waiting for them to get home from a party and wondering why they haven’t called. (Yes, I’m already catastrophizing about it.)
Time is like a concertina; we flex in and out of moments, wishing they would pass and then longing for them to return. Finding the elusive space in the middle to be present, as clichéd as it might sound, is something I am continually working on as a parent of small children.
What does being present even mean? It means being able to take and hold all the shitty bits of being a mother so that you can also catch and absorb the beautiful bits when they come (and they do, and they will). It means accepting the tantrums and the temperatures, the long rainy mornings cooped up inside, the repetitive motions of nappy changes and teeth brushing, of food being flicked at you and “YOU’RE NOT MY BEST FRIEND ANYMORE!” being screamed in your face. Without dissociating. Without checking out. Holding these moments, feeling them, making space for them, and remembering they will pass.
And if I can hold all of these moments that make me want to lock myself in the bathroom, I realize I am also present enough to catch the magical moments of sheer heart-cracking joy when they appear unannounced out of nowhere.
Because in my experience, the moments that I “plan” to be magical—birthday parties, weekends away, “bonding” moments with my daughter over a new book after she finishes her school day, are rarely that. Often, someone cries (and sometimes, it’s me). My propensity to try and control and prepare for joyful moments never works. It mostly just leads me into a self-deprecating spiral about my parenting skills.
But there are other moments that take me completely by surprise. It’s the spontaneous dancing after dinner, it’s everyone in fits of laughter over something silly; it’s a quick game of football in the rain in an empty playground, it’s seeing my little girls hug when they are reunited after a busy day. It’s the unexpected moment when my daughter grabs my hand as we walk into her first day of school and says to me: “You’re safe, mummy.”
As with everything related to motherhood, the good comes with the bad, the joy comes with the pain and there are always two sides to the coin. Or sometimes not even sides. Sometimes it’s just one big old blur of aliveness and humanness and messiness. I can be simultaneously exhausted and ecstatically happy, pissed-off and in awe, desperate for the day to end and desperate for my babies never to grow up.
So if I’m not present for the often tedious and sometimes overwhelming moments of parenting, there’s a risk that I’ll miss the golden moments too. The moments that catch me unaware, happening right under my nose. The moments that light up the long days. The moments to be grabbed and relished and remembered before the short years are gone.
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