If you have small children, and you take them out in public, this has happened to you. A sweet grandmotherly type has approached your darlings, admired them effusively, and then taken you by the elbow and dispensed the advice. You know the advice. “Enjoy these years. They grow up so fast. You just blink and they’re gone.”
When I’m in a particularly irritable or irreverent mood, I respond by widening my eyes and breathing in an awed tone, “Really? Just blink, you say? Tell me, how do you do that – EXACTLY?”
But the truth is, they’re right. They do grow up so fast. I do my best to enjoy these years. I really do. It’s something of a balancing act. I mean, you can’t enjoy these years so much that you don’t ever stop to find their shoes. You have to stop partying long enough to make lunch, things like that.
So I try to stop and play the games when I can. I listen to the re-hashing of conversations they had with their friends until I could cry from the boredom. I say, “Who’s there?” to every joyful “knock-knock!” even though the jokes almost never make any sense. I watch with them, I laugh with them. I enjoy these years.
It doesn’t work. They still seem to be growing up.
I see it the most in Tre, probably because he’s the oldest. Breaking new ground. For instance, when we were on vacation. We stayed with my Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Larry, in a house that was filled to the rafters once you added the six of us. Tre ended up sleeping on a couch. In a room that was several rooms away from me. In a strange house. And he did just fine. It didn’t bother him one bit.
Today, at the pool, he was having trouble with his goggles. He brought them to me to fix, but on his way over to me started following another mom. He was looking at the goggles, and she must have looked like me out of the corner of his eye. I was calling out to him, but he followed her almost the whole length of the pool. Now, this is just the sort of thing that would have once freaked him out, looking up to find a stranger beside him. I couldn’t run after him because Raphael was in the middle of the baby pool. So I watched anxiously. Finally, he glanced up and realized this woman was not mom. He laughed, apologized to her, and trotted back to me. “Silly me!” was his only comment.
Tonight I crept into his room to watch him sleeping. At nearly eight years old, I suspect he’s out of the range of SIDS danger, but I still like to listen to him breathe. He was lying there, with his many special blankets kicked carelessly to the side. Gone are the days when he couldn’t sleep without his fingers tangled up in his lovey. Now he doesn’t want his friends to know he even has one. I’ve seen him hide it under his bed. I’m not allowed to kiss him in front of his friends anymore, either. But I can while he’s sleeping, and that’s just what I did. I smoothed his sleep-damp hair back, and kissed his forehead, and enjoyed this time.
I hope I remember this when I’m a grandmother. I hope when it’s my turn to give the advice I say, “Enjoy these years. It won’t make them go any slower, and it won’t make it any easier when they fly by. Just do it.”