by bsquared5@aol.com | Aug 13, 2018 | Thoughts
Nine hundred and forty marbles. On the day your child is born, if you fill a jar with 940 marbles, you’d have in your hands the number of weeks between that child’s birth and his 18th birthday. That’s a hefty jar, maybe too heavy to hold with only one hand. All shiny and colorful, they clink against each other when you give the jar a shake. Deceptively small, they represent potential, time, milestones, birthdays.
By her fifth birthday, 260 of them are gone, spent over weeks that pass in a blur of diapers, feedings, Goodnight Moon, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Marbles disappeared from the jar in a haze of sleepless nights, the whir of the humidifier too soft to cover the sound of a croupy cough, frosty Christmas mornings, visits to grandparents, and post-nap cuddles in front of Dora the Explorer.
By 10, over half are missing from the once full jar. Hold it up to the light with one hand, and recall the ER visit for the broken arm, the sports equipment scattered in the foyer, and the too-big teeth in a rakish smile as he grins proudly, having scaled a tree to free a frisbee lodged between the branches. It’s not useful to pile guilt on a young mom, telling her to savor the moments, how she’ll miss all this some day. I believe in intentional parenting, but trying to live each second that way will drive you mad and eliminate all the best moments. Some good lessons come from spontaneity and stumbling your way through. To be honest, there are many bygone moments I don’t miss in the least.
Sometimes, most times, the jar is easy to dismiss. The noise of friends, flurry of school projects, and need to check the calendar constantly are more urgent matters than the number of little spheres in the jar on the desk. It’s a challenge to organize life with a teen, and siblings add to the chaos. There’s a loud chorus of voices and laughter as they raid the refrigerator, bang out tunes on the piano, and toss car keys on the counter as they come and go. By 16, only 108 marbles rattle around in the base of the jar. There are moments, sometimes whole series of them, where with gritted teeth I silently wished a few of the marbles gone, so great is the emotional toll of teenagers wrestling with independence. If they’d had a say, they might have tipped the jar themselves, willing the time to pass quickly, hungering for some imagined life of total freedom and self-sufficiency.
Mostly, as we hurtled through 17 towards 18, a sense of urgency gripped me. As their schedules became their own and we saw them less, I craved their feet on the coffee table, tousled bed heads at breakfast–or lunch. My eyes memorized their features as they did long ago when we rocked in the twilight singing “Baby Mine,” that song from Dumbo that the mama elephant croons. A remake is coming out in a few months, and we saw a preview in the theater recently. “Why are you crying?” my son asked through a mouthful of popcorn. “Don’t you remember this song?” I say. Stricken, I exchange glances with his dad, as he shakes his head. Some memories will belong only to me, made too early, before he started storing his own.
“Mom. What?” In the final weeks of their last summer, they would catch me staring and I’d look away, unable to explain, avoiding their impatience. How could they fathom the pride I felt, my wonder at their confidence, humor, and the fact that no matter how much stubble grew on his face or how smart she looked in a fitted jacket, I would always see them at 3, 8 and 16, their younger faces wavering in and out like holographic images? A curious emotional cauldron bubbled within, a witch’s brew of joy and excitement for their futures, and a deep and marrow-filling sorrow at their departure.
How did we arrive here? The supply seemed endless. Graduation parties, one last family vacation, and, this past week, a final pat on the dog’s head before climbing into the car destined for a new address, a new bed. I palm the last marble from the jar and grip it tightly. So many times when they were toddlers and teens I thought I might go nuts in the chaos and, as they say, lose my marbles. Last week, it turns out, I did just that.
by bsquared5@aol.com | Sep 9, 2016 | Thoughts
I had a solid grasp of time before I became a parent. I knew how to keep appointments, schedule my day, and meet deadlines. Time was my minion. It was just lying in wait to stage a coup, it turns out.
Once the babies arrived, it was all about the clock. Meal time, bath time, play time, blessed, blessed nap time. I had to schedule the day around those things or we’d all pay the piper. My first born thrived on routine. She needed to know what was coming next, and counted time in “how many sleeps” before the next activity. The youngest was more of a play-it-by-ear sort. Sleep was to be avoided at all costs lest he miss the party.
Juggling these polar opposites was part of the universe’s scheme to undo me. Toddlers don’t live inside time. This is why you never, never tell a small child about an event more than 5 minutes before it happens. Their emotions are volcanic. Anticipation cannot be contained. When are we seeing Santa? Is it time for Santa? Can it be time for Santa now? Mommy, Santa, Mommy!!!! If you mention Christmas in casual conversation sometime in October, you will hear about it 157,000 times a day for the next three months.
Minutes mean nothing. Minutes are sands in the hourglass. An hourglass snagged by small, sticky fingers that gets tipped, shaken, and hurled into the wall. You hold up a finger to indicate these minutes while you’re on the phone: Just a minute, honey. While you’re checking out at the grocery store: Hold on a minute, sweetheart. While you’re in the bathroom: For the love of all that’s holy, IN A MINUTE!
Once, I was in a long line at the post office waiting to mail six heavy boxes of Christmas presents I’d stacked on the counter. As the line inched forward, I slid the boxes and my squirming toddler along together. She had to go potty, of course, because she absolutely did not have to go before we left home. “Can you wait a minute, punkin?” She sweetly nodded twice, and then let go, all over the counter and down the sides onto the floor. Turns out “wait a minute” in toddler-speak means “now.”
Parenting is full of now moments. Our bodies get in on the game at ground zero and we have nine months of having to eat now, sleep now, go into labor now. Parenting puts us at 
the mercy of the universe’s clock, which looks more like the ones in a Salvador Dali painting. Babies demand soothing now. Small children want everything right now. From the time they can talk, we hear “Watch me! Are you watching? Look what I can do now!” It’s exhausting. Some days you spend wishing for time to speed up. Bedtime can’t come fast enough. If only they could walk, talk, be out of diapers, be more independent! Some days, the ones you just survive, last forever. Some days, the ones full of rocking and smiles saved just for you, you wish you could freeze frame.
Parenting is full of delayed moments. Eventually, as they grasp the concept of time, instead of making life easier and more organizable, somehow it backfires into you having to wait. The minutes you desperately wanted them to grant you, they give you in spades. Except with the words “five more” tacked on as a prefix. Time for bed! Five more minutes?? Time for dinner! Five more minutes! I’m almost to the next level/waiting for this show to end/on the phone/doing my hair/catching a Pokemon. Some days you spend wishing they’d catch up. Hurry up is an impossible dream. How long can it take a human being to finish a bowl of cereal? Find their shoes? Walk out to the car? For crying out loud, we are going to be late to school/practice/church/life again! Some days, the days you spend in a mad scramble of calendars and agendas, disappear in a dizzy haze of push and pull. You’re Alice’s white rabbit.
Parenting is full of later moments. Teens want everything later. When are you going to take out the trash? Later. Have any homework? I’ll do it later. When will you be home? Later. How about scheduling a college visit? Can we do that later? Gotta run, mom, I’ll text you later. Their time becomes more their own and their friends’ and less of it is reserved for you. The now’s have turned into “whenever’s.” It’s rare that they yell for you to “watch me!” More likely, they prefer privacy and hands-off. Still, you watch the clock with sleepless worry when they’re out late behind the wheel. You bite your tongue and try to wait to be invited to talk about the heartbreak or disappointment they’ve faced. With fewer demands on your time, there’s somehow the backward sense of time speeding by, those hourglass grains slipping through your fingers even as you try to gather them. Time warps: the days are long, but the years are short.
I’m fast approaching the empty nest, when I’ll return to being able to schedule my days and minutes sans interruption. Funny thing is, I stopped wearing a watch about a year ago. My oldest turns 20 this week–an age I can’t fathom. All the now’s, hurry up’s and later’s seem like both yesterday and ages ago. Suddenly, I want to pause: just a minute! Five more minutes? But time, in its own cadence, marches on.
