I realized when I was pregnant for the first time that there are many things in life people will inevitably tell you a bzillion times which you can cognitively know to be true, but which you will not really "get" until much later.
Things like, "You think you are tired now..." or, "Just wait, you have now idea just how hard it is until the baby is born," and so on. True statements, but ones which only experience make comprehensible.
Fourteen plus years since that first go-round with growing a baby and I am just now "getting" one of the world's favorite adages for new parents: "They grow so fast; he's a baby now, but tomorrow he'll be asking for the car keys, and the next day he'll be gone."
Well, Boy 1 has another year before he can have the car keys at all, but the experiences of the past few weeks have been, for me, the experiences by which I have learned just exactly what "they grow so fast" really means.
Finishing 8th grade has been the first real experience of end times; of witnessing the end of a major part of my son's life. Of course, kindergarten marked the end of those earliest years, the end of 5th grade was the end of elementary school, but for me those endings were far less monumental. Boy 1 was still a child at the end of all the previous ends.
Not so now. The end times of middle school point to the end of his early years, the end of his education as a child.
My experience of the various markers of these endings (the last middle school concert, the last awards assembly, the final projects) have been a fine combination of sweet nostalgia. I do not long for the olden days or wish he would always stay as he is now.
Rather, I sweetly remember his little pixie face and the many Mother's Day gifts from his elementary school years while celebrating who he is now and eagerly looking forward to watching him grow through his next adventures.
How true it is that they grow so fast. I am glad to say that the truth of this statement has been a source of excitement and joy far more than the sense of impending doom so often misread into before we really have a chance to "get" it.
My child turned a month old yesterday and it made me cry to think that she was no longer a newborn. Time is already flying by and I can't make it slow down. But I can enjoy it as it goes. Thanks for the mom insight.
ReplyDeleteTonight I signed Ben's papers to take Physical Science and Algebra I and pointed out to him that these were high school courses. I actually felt it physically resonate through me that my son - the one I can still feel sleeping against my chest - is ready to take high school level courses. I know how you feel...
ReplyDeleteKristina, my experience was that it actually did slow down again after the boys were a bit older. They just change SOOOOO much those first months. But, that was me and I am sure it is different for us all.
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