It All Goes So Quickly
…And there you were, it was in a flash and you were gone. I had missed it without knowing. You had changed and I hadn’t seen it. Sitting beside me was no longer my baby but my little boy.
Sitting in the nurses office waiting for the impending four year old vaccination shot, I was fully prepared! Based on our last hospital experience involving two small stitches and requiring five adults to hold my then thrashing and, for no other word for it, primal three year old, I was primed, pumped and hanging on the precipice of a full blown meltdown.
Toddler, our little lady, buckled, strapped and locked in to the stroller, allowing for two free hands armed for the brace position. In came the wonderful nurse, needle in one hand and a container of lollipops in the other, diplomatically she explained to my subtly tensing boy, shifting and shuffling in his seat, cleverly getting to the point that the only way to gain a lollipop was to unfortunately trade off for a needle…here we go, cue the tears, readied and able I waited for the scream…but what unfolded before me was the unexpected.
My little one, my baby in my eyes, turned to the nurse with nonchalant confidence simply said “ok.” Pinch of the needle, his little head just rested upon my shoulder and it was over, no tears, no panic, no fear. He was gone. In that fleeting moment my baby was gone and here before me, in his place sat my little boy, lollipop in hand and smiling. It was the unexpected, it flawed me and I wasn’t ready.
In those early years we, as parents, can sometimes get lost. Days blurred into one big, messy, haggard rush of devastating fatigue, schedules, routines, frets and worries, raging tantrums, mixed emotions, wins, losses and failures. We are running, constantly, in a state of readiness, planning three steps ahead in an attempt to evade the ‘what if.’ We get embarrassed, we lose our cool, we get flustered and get frustrated. We have beautiful moments coupled with catastrophic ones. We have immense, all encompassing love with fraying, fearful doubts and questions.
Those years are a blur. They are a profound blur, but they are fast. They are a flash, a blink, and before you know it they are changed and they are gone. Your baby has grown, flown and skipped into childhood. In truth though, I don’t think you can ever be prepared for it. The moment will hit you. It will throw you and it will pass and you’ll find you’ve entered the next chapter. I’m not saying it will be easier, simply that it will be it different. I know he will present me with newer and even more exciting challenges, but part of me will miss the baby and be sad that it went so quickly. Hold on to the moments, even when they get hard. When you feel you’ve given your all and have nothing more to give – be present in them, feel them and live them, soon they will be memories, reflections and times fondly missed.
