I waved goodbye to you as you headed to school on your birthday (an inch taller than the day before, surely, and with a confident new bounce in your step), and suddenlyit hit me: You are halfway to an adult. I don’t know how to get my mind around that, because at the rate the years are speeding by, 18 is bound to sneak up on me like some kind of time-slip ninja.
We went on a family vacation to South Dakota this summer, and your favorite part was visiting the Badlands. “It’s like walking on Mars!” you kept exclaiming, your awe mingled with adventure. Before I could shout something vaguely cautionary, you were scampering over hills and scaling rocks like a mountain goat.
With visions of catastrophic falls and skinned knees dancing in our heads (to say nothing of lurking rattlesnakes), Dad and I had an airtight plan: We’d simply keep you and your brother right beside us so we could catch you if you fell. It quickly became clear, however, that you are much more gazelle-like than we are. So we tried a backup plan: We’d just keep you in our line of sight. Even this was a challenge, given your double dose of agility and fearlessness. And at a certain point, I had to admit to myself: Even if we’re right there, is there anything we can do to stop you from cascading down a rocky ledge?
***
The name doesn’t do the place justice—the Badlands are truly remarkable. The hills took us by surprise, rising out of nowhere from an unassuming stretch of prairie. The scene was like a kaleidoscope, reflecting various shades of red, purple, and orange, depending on the time of day and the angle of sunlight. But when we set foot on the hills themselves, the ground beneath us seemed to be eroding as fast as we could take a step. Indeed, according to the national park sign you read to us, this kind of sedimentary rock erodes an inch per year—compared to 1,000 years for most rocks.
This strikes me as an apt metaphor for Parenting Standard Time: The ground shifts under us the moment we get our feet planted.
***
So many things have surprised me about parenting in these nine years since you were born: the vacuuming frequency, the rate at which we go through bananas, how fast my body can move when you’re hurt. But one of the most consistent conundrums has been the passage of time. I know that technically a minute is always 60 seconds and there are always 24 hours in a day. But how is it that an hour when you were crying inconsolably as an infant felt like a week, and that week when our whole family had the flu felt like a month? Meanwhile, the year between eight and nine slipped through the hourglass like a handful of crumbly rocks.
According to another sign you read, the Badlands is the only national park where there are walkable sections without trails, where there’s open space to explore and create your own path. True, there are markers along the way, almost like a scavenger hunt. It occurs to me that parenting is a lot like walking in the Bandlands: There’s no road map for this.The scenery is ever-changing, shifting practically under our feet. But it’s beautiful in its very changeability. There’s a new vista at every turn.
And I’m trying to catch up, attempting to savor the mental snapshots as they come, fighting the longing for solid rock under my feet.
Now that you’re nine, I feel it more than ever, this tension of wanting to protect you and wanting to empower you. You are increasingly faster than I am, going places I can’t go. As the ground shifts beneath your feet and ours, Dad and I won’t be able to protect you from everything. We won’t be able to stop you from slipping every time. But we know the One who can. And we can do what’s in our power to equip you with wings so that when you stumble, you’ll fly instead of fall.
In the meantime, we’ll stock up on Band-Aids. (For all of us.)
So happy birthday, our halfway-to-a-grownup kid. The view from here may be shifting faster than the hills of South Dakota, but it sure is lovely.
We love you! Mom and Dad
I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip.
In the manual of things my children have taught me, one of thickest chapters is about the gift of slowing down. Mind you, I haven’t always seen this as a gift, especially when there are realities like clocks and deadlines and tardies and hard stops. Since becoming a mom, I’m slower than I used to be. But to my surprise, this has an unexpected upside. Turns out, there’s a lot more to notice in a lower gear.
As Barbara Brown Taylor says, “The child has only recently learned how to walk, so she still knows how.” My kids know things I need to relearn, like how to spot a roly-poly on the sidewalk or how to hear the hum of an airplane overhead. When I’m rushing from A to B, or when my mind is borrowing trouble from the past or the future, I tend to miss the beauty right under my nose.
There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to slowing down, but for me, one of the surefire ways is to be literal about it: to choose a slower mode of transportation.
When we’re riding our bikes instead of driving, we notice the flash of fuchsia flowers tucked among the dandelions.
When we’re walking instead of getting around on wheels, we see our neighbors on their front porch and stop to say hello.
When we’re reading on a blanket on a sunny afternoon instead of going places, we leave enough space for a white butterfly to land beside us.
It’s true that technology can make us more efficient. It can get us there faster and without breaking a sweat. But no chatbot has the heart required to write a love letter. No blue glow can take the place of a field of lightning bugs on an August evening. A phone can’t hold your hand while you look for the Big Dipper.
I am grateful for the added margin technology can create in our lives. But what will we miss out on if we erase the struggle altogether? What will happen to our souls if we outsource the ability to create? What will atrophy inside us if we lose the ability to wonder? If not us, who will stand amazed under a starlit sky?How will we hear the still, small voice of God if we always have earbuds in?
Today, I resolve to be bored. To not know. To daydream. To find shapes in the clouds. To embrace mystery. To be blissfully inefficient.
And when I’m tempted to say things like “Hurry up,” may I instead say, “Thank you.”
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
It was the best of days; it was the hottest of days…
To have a three-year-old is to be thrust into a yearlong summer—the kind with record-breaking heat waves and furious squalls.
You sweat and you play. You love it and you long for a reprieve. You’re convinced you’ll melt, and you don’t want it to end. You duck for cover when tornadic winds touch down. You eat too many popsicles on the front porch.
In this season of parenting a child with a hankering for autonomy and bursting with so. many. opinions., I feel the heat and intensity of these days.
The words of a Van Morrison song have been echoing through my mind the last couple of months:
These are the days of the endless summer…
These are the days indeed.
These are the days of sloppy whispers in my ear: “I wuv you, Mama.” And these are the days of “Me not like you anymore!” when I limit his daily banana quota.
These are the days of “revenge peeing” in the corner (the term so aptly coined by Daniel). And these are the days of being met by squeals and full-body hugs when we walk in the door.
These are the days of brothers sneaking into bed to read together in the morning. And these are the days when Duplos also function as tiny plastic missiles.
These are the days of cute phrases like “croco-gator” (crocodile + alligator) and “mus-beard” (mustache + beard). And these are the days of meltdowns over the wrong color cereal bowl.
Endless summer. Isn’t that the pinky promise summer makes with us? You realize it’s not true—you know it can’t last forever—but as you wipe ice cream from sticky faces, as mosquitoes feast on bare ankles and fireflies blink languidly in the dusk, you can almost be lulled into believing the calendar page will never turn.
But in these long days of August, I catch a whiff of the changing of seasons.
Will this be the last time I buy a box of overpriced diaper genie refill bags? Will this be the last time our boy dashes into our bed during a thunderstorm, thinking it’s bad guys? Will this be the last time I do an emergency potty cleanup in the grocery store? Will this be the last time I carry a sleep-heavy boy to his bed after a playground date?
“It goes by so fast,” they say. They’re right, of course. But I have no more power to slow down these years than I do to pause the sun in its descent or to delay the approach of autumn.
It seems so obvious, but it hit me like a gut punch today: This is the youngest my kids will ever be.
So what can I do, time-bound creature that I am? I suppose my only recourse is to savor the moments as I can and try to make a truce with the calendar. I’ll resist the longing to fast-forward or rewind or press pause. I’ll do my best to remember as many sweet things as I can, and just enough of the spicy bits to empathize with moms of other threenagers one day.
And maybe this afternoon, when the sun is beating down on us, we’ll sit on the porch and eat another popsicle.
I hear it again today, in the produce aisle this time. “Savor every moment,” she says, the smell of nostalgia mingling with summer strawberries.
I know what she means. But on this day The overripeness stings my nose and I can’t stop the sweat from beading on all my fleshy parts.
This grocery list of All The Things required to keep small people alive— it’s like being served a giant chocolate cake every single day. Decadent, delicious . . . even enviable.
But how do you savor something when there are five mouthfuls stuffed in your cheeks at once?
How do you savor something when you must consume every last bit, even when you’re overfull?
My friend Sarah says, she with the wise words and two steps ahead: Savor one bite. This bite. The one on your fork right now. You don’t have to savor them all at once.
So I grab a pint of strawberries and reach deep for a smile.
Maybe we’ll make strawberry shortcake together. And if some of the juicy ones end up in the compost pile, amen and so be it. I will trust that even there, they are not wasted.
Over the past half a year, you have somehow both enlarged me and made my world smaller.
In those first few months, amid a pandemic/social distancing and a winter with record-breaking snowfalls, our world was mostly a cozy four-person cocoon. In the middle of the night, when I fed you by the glow of the Christmas lights we strung on your ceiling, it could have been just you and me in the universe, if not for the snack your dad left for me beside the rocking chair.
Our world was small, yes. But you have also been showing me a grander view of the world.
When I see the man at the stoplight holding a tattered sign, my usually calloused heart is pierced. He was once a baby too, I think. He once had a mother who rocked him to sleep.
When I hear you laugh—without filter or self-consciousness—I can believe in breathtaking joy, the kind that blooms out of the soil of sorrow.
When I see your sense of wonder over the little things—bubbles catching the sunlight just so, a leaf dancing in the breeze—I am reminded to slow down, to bear witness to the miraculous right under my nose.
When I see you and your brother communicating with no need for words, I can embrace a world where reconciliation is possible, where hearts can be glued back together.
You have surprised me, little man . . . and humbled me too. I’ve had a baby before, I remember thinking. Better yet, I’ve had a baby boy. I probably know how to do this.But of course I don’t. Because I’ve never had you before.
You made it clear even before you were born, when the wild rumpus ensued in my belly, that you were your own little person. Ever since, you’ve been on the move, wiggling and kicking and grinning and generally charming your way through life. You refuse to be held on my hip, preferring to be face-out so you won’t miss a single thing.
As a one-toe-in-the-water kind of person myself, I marvel at the way you cannonball straight into the deep end. I admire your moxie, the way you embrace the world and everyone you meet with open arms and a full-body grin.
Just one year—that’s all the time we get you as a baby. I’m trying to drink in the joy of it this time around, knowing it’s like juice concentrate. So much to take in with a single sip, but there’s no way to water it down.
So halfy birthday, little guy. We can’t imagine the world without you; we can’t imagine our family without you. Please keep teaching us—we have a lot more to learn.
I played hooky from work yesterday. It was one of those late-spring mornings that beckoned, all blue skies and sweet lilac air. The boys were crabby and craving attention, and I wasn’t making much headway on my deadlines anyway. So we grabbed hats and sunscreen and headed out for a hike on a trail near our home.
Our destination: a modest cave that doesn’t even warrant a name. At its entrance is a faded sign that reads simply, “Cave.” But for a three-year-old, it was magic.
Graham packed his little blue backpack with a flashlight and a snack. “Mama, do you think bears like fruit snacks?”
We explored the cave, barely big enough for a grown-up person to stand up in. To Graham’s simultaneous disappointment and relief, we didn’t find any bears. But along the way, we did see butterflies and bugs, ducks and dandelions, sticks and squirrels.
As we headed home, I thought about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day”:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel in the grass how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
As I looked in the rearview mirror at the boys nodding off in their car seats, it occurred to me:
Who better than a toddler to help me relearn how to pay attention? Who better than a person under three feet to show me how to fall down into the grass? Who better than a baby with leg rolls and a solitary cheek dimple to show me what it looks like to be idle and blessed?
Parenthood has revealed to me that everything does indeed die at last, and too soon—the baby’s propensity to giggle uproariously before the tickle even lands, the look of milk-drunk bliss on his face after he eats, the way he rests his right hand under his head when he sleeps. The toddler’s ability to create a world where Toy Story characters pretend to be lions who also happen to be fighting a fire; the way he tells Milo daily, “I love you so much, little bwother. I’m going to keep you.”
And it hits me: We will never have a summer when they’re three-and-a-half and six-months-old again. We have this one wild and precious summer. What is it we plan to do with it?
If there’s a common refrain to the parenting advice I hear, it’s this: Enjoy it, because it goes fast. I’m always left a little stymied by these words. Because when you have little people in your life, the momentum is always pulsing forward. There’s no pausing, no slowing down, no going back. How do you stop a speeding locomotive whose brakes have been disabled? How do you hold back a cascading waterfall with your bare hands?
I don’t know how to slow time down. I only know how to slow myself down.
And so this summer we will go on hikes in the woods. We will shine our flashlights into caves like the mighty bear hunters we are. We will flagrantly disregard our phones, our deadlines, our dirty toilets, our drive for productivity, our tyrannical to-do lists. We will kneel in the grass. We will collect sticks. We will look for butterflies. We will fail. And we will find the grace to try again.
So if you are looking for me on a summer day, you just may find me strolling through a field, a child in each arm.
Won’t you join me?
***
Work is not always required. . . . There is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.
It turns out that a person doesn’t necessarily need to be able to speak coherent sentences to be an effective tutor. Case in point: the pint-sized spit-up machine who is currently teaching me that sometimes being is better than doing.
I am a planner by nature. I like to make lists and, even better, cross things out. I enjoy the anticipation of thinking ahead…dreaming and scheming for tomorrow or next week or next month.
But when your schedule revolves around a twelve-pound person who can’t think about the future beyond I’m hungry, I’m sleepy, or I’m poopy, planning ceases to be very effective. You don’t know if the baby will nap (or for how long). You don’t know if he’ll wake up smiley or moody or you’d-better-hold-me-or-I-will-scream-like-a-banshee.
And so my tutor reminds me that sometimes we need to set the to-do list aside. Perhaps that’s one of the things children know that we grown-ups have forgotten: we can’t live in the future. We have only been given today. Children (and those with childlike hearts) have a way of inviting us—practically daring us—into the sacred now.
My little guy wordlessly tells me what God has been trying to say to me all along: that while there’s merit to hard work, it doesn’t define me. My worth isn’t predicated on my productivity. My identity isn’t determined by the number of things I crossed off (or didn’t cross off) my to-do list.
In the quiet hours of the night, after my little one is full and content, I sometimes hold him for an extra moment before stumbling back to bed. I marvel at the way he nestles perfectly into me, with his head tucked under my chin and his limbs curled up against me. I’m all too aware, the second time around this parenting rodeo, that he won’t fit there for long. I’ll blink and his arms and legs won’t fit on my lap. I’ll turn my head for a moment and he will be much too sophisticated to snuggle with his mama.
And so I try to soak in the moments as they come. Not every moment, because heaven knows it’s only possible to savor things one drop at a time, not when they come in a virtual tsunami. But I will try to seize the little moments—a dimpled smile, a tiny sigh, a contented gurgle—and freeze-frame them in my heart.
So maybe we don’t need to throw out the to-do list altogether. But perhaps we’d be better off if we could lose track of it for a bit. If we could look into the eyes of the person we’re with and be all there. In the sacred now.
I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
