Remember When

For most of my life, I'd been in a losing, yet frantic, struggle to stop time. Always aware of the ticking of the clock, I feared how fast time screamed by. If I didn't do everything possible to live in the moment, it would evaporate before I had a chance to even see it. A favorite movie of mine is "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."  I loved his mantra: Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Problem was, I kept stopping life so I could look around. And as anyone who has ever driven a car knows, you stop too often, you get nowhere.

So for as long as I can recall, I've battled the panic over life moving at life-speed, and my desire to call a time-out so I could thoroughly enjoy every minute.

You know what happened to kick this dilemma into a Stage 5 Terror Alert?

Becoming a parent.

It began with my pregnancy. Friends, family, strangers—anyone with a voice—would tell me to enjoy my sleep now, because I'd never sleep again. Or enjoy my husband now, because we'd never talk again until this child left the house at 18. Enjoy eating now, because I'll be on a diet forever to lose the baby fat. Enjoy today, because tomorrow is going to suck, essentially.

I made it my mission to adore being pregnant (which, thankfully, was easy, since my pregnancy was ridiculously blissful. Thank you, hormones!) and to hang on to these last pre-parenthood days with gusto. We traveled. We went on dates. We slept. We slept late. We had fun. But behind all of it lurked this panic planted by all those well-meaning congratulations and nuggets of advice I didn't ask for. I feared the unknown path of parenthood, so if I stopped and looked around long enough at my pre-motherhood life, I could hang on to as much of it as possible. Exhausting, yes.

But not nearly as utterly, destructively exhausting as what came next.

I had a baby. And the comments, guised in the cloak of assistance and female sisterhood, flooded in, drowning me. Every single time I went out in public with my daughter, strangers would talk about how awesome parenting is, how their babies are now 43 years old, how much they loved these newborn days, how much they miss having babies, how I MUST enjoy every minute. "Because they grow so fast! It'll be over before you know it. Just cherish every minute!" Every bit of conversation ended with this nugget. Or should I call it a hit, because every single time I heard it, I felt bruised and fearful. I felt like a horrid mother because, honestly, I found it difficult to enjoy parenting as much as these people said I should. And that just did wonders for my mommy self-esteem.

Newborns change so much from week to week, you could literally sit down and watch them transform before your eyes. As I witnessed my daughter go from red, curled-up, wrinkled newborn to creamy-skinned, bright-eyed baby, I quivered with anxiety. Everyone is right, I screamed. I am going to go to bed tonight and when I wake, my girl will be in high school. Just like that! And I missed it! I wasn't enjoying it enough!

Missing anything—even a good deal at Target—gives me hives. Missing out on moments of motherhood, well, that gave me certifiable insanity. I promptly launched a mission to capture every second of this new life, just as I did my pregnancy. Of course, as anyone with a newborn will tell you, there are lots of moments (hell, days and weeks of them) that are downright miserable. Why stop and look around here? Because I'll regret missing this, I screeched to myself. Because it all goes so fast! I must enjoy it all!

I took thousands of pictures, hours of video, wrote in dozens of journal pages all in the hopes of capturing time. The minute I'd feel bored stupid with parenthood, frustrated the girl wouldn't sleep, in tears because nursing was less appealing than shoving a stick up my nose, guilt overtook me. Maybe mothers knew something I didn't. Maybe I just wasn't cut out for motherhood because I did not enjoy it every minute of the day.

As days turned to months turned to years, I added another baby and more anxiety. Once one became two, time really did seem to go fast. And if I thought I was busy with one, I was sadly mistaken. Two wasn't overwhelming, but close to it at times.

Yet it was this turn on my life highway, when I was at my busiest, that I realized something: All of those well-meaning advice givers were full of crap.

Yes, life goes fast. Way, way too fast. And yes, we should enjoy parenthood instead of complain and gripe about it all of the time, wishing it away. But it's impossible to love it every single day.  I had a friend of mine once tell me in my pre-baby days that parenthood is a bit like marriage. Are you mindlessly, over-the-moon in love and joyful every single day? No. Would you trash it all and be single again? No way. Same with parenthood. Every day is not a fun-filled ride on "It's a Small World." Poopy diapers get ripped off and used as feces-filled paintbrushes. Babies scream for no other reason than they can. Boobs hurt. Faces wrinkle. Tinkling becomes a family affair. Days and nights get confused. Spit up smells worse when dry. Tantrums in the middle of Trader Joe's make you want to abandon the cart with kid inside and run away.

But you don't. You don't want to trade it all in because at the end of the (very long) day, you know you'd rather be their mom than anything else. Even if today sucked ass.

Author and blogger Gretchen Rubin said “The days are long, but the years are short.” The more years I log as a mom, the more I understand this completely. There are days that will not end. I used to count my days as work days and weekends. Now, I count them as the time between naps, meals and bedtimes. Some days, it feels like I spent years in the kitchen, making snacks and lunches and breakfasts. But when I picked my head up and finally looked around, it would be 10 p.m. and I had no idea. Wasn't it just breakfast? Motherhood really messes with your internal clock.

Having my two babies left me less time to obsess about my mission to live in the minute while consciously taking stock of said minute. In reality, that's impossible. But in my head, I thought it was a must-do.

But now, I think I figured it out. It's impossible to hold on to every minute without missing the next one coming down the road. Some moments are tough. Some are bittersweet. Others are beautiful. But I don't have to feel guilt anymore because I don't blissfully enjoy every single one of them. I can accept them for what they are, tuck them away and move on. 

Parenting expert Sandy McDaniel helped me out. She said that she spends a lot of her time now remembering when her children were younger, entering school, playing around during summer vacation.

"Your 'when' is now," she wrote in a recent newsletter. "You 'chill' too, and don't miss playtime without all the school schedules. Enjoy your children."

That was it! Not "enjoy every single minute." Not "this time goes so fast, hang on with a death-grip." Not "You'll regret it if you don't feel like Snow White with birds singing songs of joy around your head every day you wake up."

Enjoy your children. Your now will someday be your remember when. So enjoy your kids.

That, I can do. Even when they're screaming, or painting with poop, or not eating well, or biting me, or crawling on top of the bookshelf, or diving into the drama queen pool, or asking me for the 36^th time to play on the computer, or running through the library and screaming like a drunk "Jersey Shore" fool. I can hate the moment, feel frustration into my bone marrow, ache longingly to have a few uninterrupted hours of work time, want to scream and run away. But throughout it all, I always enjoy my babies. Maybe not the moment or the circumstance. But my kids. I can enjoy them. That, I can do. I can look at that moment, "click" a mental picture, file it away as a "remember when" and keep going. This will work with the crazy moments as well as the ones I want to hang on to forever. 

So the next time I get that snippet of advice from someone warning me how fast time goes by and how I'll regret it if I don't relish every moment, enjoying each one, I'll say, "I am enjoying my kids. This moment, on the other hand, sucks and I don't care if it speeds by. My kids, though, yeah, I'll enjoy them and I will probably turn this into one of those 'remember when' moments in about 10 years. This moment, with the toddler frantically grabbing on to me in his attempt to climb out of the cart as if it was the icy Bering Sea, and my daughter dissolving into tears because I snapped at her for ramming her child-sized shopping cart into my ankle for the ninth time. But right this very second, I’m fine with just enjoying having kids."

Of course I won't say any of that. I'll nod, chuckle knowingly and say "Oh don't I know it. Yes, I am enjoying every single second." Because that's what I'm supposed to say. But in my head, I'll answer the way I want. I will remind myself that while I don't enjoy the moment, I do enjoy my kids. I will remember this moment, love it or not. Guilt be gone.

Bendings, Part Two

Another beginning and ending—a bending. And this one bent my heart in two. I wrote this last week, and I'm still feeling the same.

June 13….

Preschool ended today, and my heart broke. I knew this day was coming, of course. I'd known it since the day I set foot in that small, cozy, parent-participation school three years ago. But graduation seemed eons away on that first day when I dressed my toddler up in her first pair of new-school shoes and walked her through the door.

And somehow, today is that day. The end of preschool. For more than half of her life, my girl has been going to this preschool and it became part of our weekly routine. Having a preschooler, not yet a schoolgirl, meant that my girl could still be considered my baby. I feared jumping on the school train because everyone said that's when time really speeds up and the years scream past. One minute you're attending Back to School Night in kindergarten, and the next you are helping them cram for their senior finals. I'm terrified the next time I pop my head out of the sand to look around, my girl will be driving off to college and I'll be standing dumfounded in the driveway wondering how we got here.

I've been swimming in clichés like that all week. If I heard myself say, "It feels like just yesterday I was touring this school for the first time," I was going to scream. But the truth is, it's all true! It went so fast, and now here I am. At the end.

Our last day was amazing, yet so bittersweet. A field trip to the neighboring train station, cupcakes on the playground, visiting with friends, songs, a collection of artwork given to us by our teacher, a party at a friend's house after school. But throughout it all, I felt disbelief that this was really the end. The moms seemed to be walking through the day in this similar state of disbelief, while the kids couldn't wait to get to the party, have another cookie, talk about "kinnergardin" and new schools. As students said goodbye to their teacher and then ran out of the classroom in a state of summer bliss, the grown ups dabbed their eyes and tried to milk the last minutes for all they were worth. But the day was so busy, I didn't have much time to ponder the reality of all of this. Yet.

Later this afternoon, my girl pulled one of her baby brother's new toys out of the pile and said, "Can I take this for Share Day?" I started to answer, and then realized she wouldn't have another Share Day.

Because today, she graduated from preschool.

And I did what any sane mother does at the moment life slaps her in the face: I started bawling.

Basically, it means my first-born baby is growing up.

This preschool schedule, and my volunteer days spent at the school, became such a routine for us, I feel lost now that they are over. My girl is a winter baby, so she missed the kindergarten cutoff. At any rate, I would have kept her for that bonus year because of the amazing growth and development I witnessed throughout the previous two years at this school with its nurturing teaching staff. And when I find something good and something that works, I want to keep it forever. I'm learning that with kids, this is an impossibility.

My girl was going to grow up, no matter how tightly I hung on.

Like I wrote in my previous blog, parenting is nothing if not a series of beginnings and endings. I hate it. Get used to one phase or stage, and then everything changes. We wrapped preschool into our lives. The vast majority of our friends—mine and my daughter's—came from preschool. When I had my son, the preschool rallied and provided dinners for us for two weeks. TWO weeks! Basically, preschool was a large part of our family's life.

Now that it's over, I feel unbelievably lost. My girl is fine. I'm a wreck.

I remember my girl's first day at the school. I got up early and dressed her in the cutest red and blue dress with matching leggings. Curly blond pigtails stuck out from either side of her head and she carried a new green backpack with her name embroidered on the flap. Her speech skills were still rough back then, as were her potty training talents. She barely reached the top of the classroom doorknob. Leaving her for those three hours seemed foreign to me. I didn't really know what to do with myself. No one cried; it was a surprisingly easy transition. At lunch, when I picked her up, her hair flew in wild waves about her face, a potty accident necessitated a change of clothes and she had sand in her shoes. I'd never seen her so exhausted or satisfied.

From that day on, we were on the preschool bandwagon and we never looked back. I avoided thinking about the end. But today I had to. There wasn't a choice. I stayed with her all day at school today, taking photos of nearly every detail I could in an effort to capture not just the images of this school and her preschool experience, but the feel of it all. The way the morning light entered the classrooms and made them glow. The blue confetti carpet as dark as midnight. The way the guinea pigs nibbled on leftover vegetables. The smell of paint and markers. The endless puzzles and games. The large wooden blocks used to build boats, cars, trains and cities. The small wooden table and chairs. The cubbies on rollers where artwork was placed at the end of the day.

I went into each of the other two classrooms to say goodbye to the other teachers my daughter had in years prior, and memories hit me hard. The entire school leaked memories from every corner. I could see my daughter in every inch of that school. Walking in the front door with me every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Listening to stories next to the pet mouse that seemed to live as long as some cats I know. Sitting at the table rolling homemade clay around or reading a dinosaur book on the big pillow in the corner. Talking to the classroom fish. Playing with the trucks instead of the dolls. Running to the playground. Finally mastering the monkey bars.

It all became too much. This school, and these women whom I entrusted my daughter to every school day, became a part of our lives. They helped shape this amazing, beautiful young girl I am still amazed is mine. I look back at how absolutely tiny and young she was on her first day at school, and it seems incomprehensible to me that today, she is this joking, laughing, foot-taller child. She is no longer my baby. She's now officially an elementary schooler. Will she look back on her preschool years the way I do, with loving fondness? I pull out the dusty memories of my time with Mrs. Zimmerman as some amazing memories. Will my girl? How I hope! 

Enrolling her in kindergarten didn't start this emotional tsunami. Nor did waking up this morning and knowing it would be her last day. It was leaving for the last time. Hearing the gate close, watching the teachers leave. I knew I'd see them again and have the chance, God willing, to have them help shape and influence my son. But it would be different. Not better, not worse. Just different.

For this is my first baby, my first experience with this heartbreaking, torturous beauty known as parenting. I am blessed that my daughter is healthy and able to grow normally and attend school as she should. Of course I am so grateful. Yet I can't deny that a large part of my heart wants to literally hold her in my arms so tightly she can't get any bigger, can't leave my sight, can't start talking like those smartasses on nightly sitcoms. I want to wrap her up and preserve this moment exactly like it is. I want to freeze (damn cliché again!) time right now, with my girl running through the preschool playground laughing carelessly and in a way only the innocent can.

I fear her growing up. My best friend says that every stage has amazing things to cherish. I have to take her word on that. Because now, I'm stuck in the preschool stage. I have my foot jammed in the door and my hands white-knuckling the doorjamb as forces try to pull me out. I don't want to go. A near panic descends upon me as I think about how fast the past three years have gone by, and how fast the next 13 will too. I am frightened about the unknowns of elementary school (will she get a good teacher? Will she make new friends? Will I? Will we all fit in? Did we make the right choice of schools? Will she continue to love school?)  and I mourn the end of her preschool days.

Is that too harsh a word? Mourn? Perhaps. But right now, it feels like a loss. I feel homesick and a bit grief-stricken. I miss the preschool routine, the joy of watching these kids grow and play and say silly things and do even sillier ones. I have no doubt why these three women continue to teach year after year. The chance to have such a strong role in a child's life and to be present at the stage of the preschool theater is an opportunity to treasure.

Yes, it's over and I need to figure out how to deal with it. It does my girl no good to watch me dissolve in tears every time I see a piece of her artwork or read a note from her teacher. Yet I don't know how. Maybe I just need to sit with the sadness for a bit, let it wash over me and then recede like the tide. Maybe this is a clue to parenting: learning how to hold your breath while the bittersweet moments threaten to wash you under.

Basically, the sadness comes not so much from us leaving one school and entering another. It's what that transition means. It means my baby girl is growing up. And as much as I may ache to stop it at times, I can't. Nor do I really want to. I know it's a necessary part of life. And I do look forward with anticipation to see how this beautiful little creature becomes an amazing woman. Each day she unfolds another petal and shows us another side of her blossoming personality.

But for now, I am going to sit with this sadness, this loss, for a bit longer as I try to find my way. I know I still have the memories, the friends, the pictures and videos of our time at preschool. (And the giant tote of artwork.) Yet I need to digest that it's now in our past.  Our past makes up who we are in the present. So this amazing little preschool tucked away inside of a church, the women who nurtured and loved my baby each week, and the friends my sweet girl made will always be a part of us, now and in the future. But oh, how I will miss it being in our present!

Bendings, Part One

I distinctly remember a moment in my girl's infancy. She was perhaps three months old, not old enough yet to do much more than poop, eat and make funny faces. It seemed like those three months lasted three years. I sat in a playgroup watching other moms with their babies, and a few of those babies were sitting and—gasp!—crawling. I believed with every fiber of my being that there was no way my girl would ever crawl. We would be stuck in this quasi-newborn stage forever. I just could not imagine her getting older, growing up, crawling, talking, walking. I couldn't see past where we were right then.

That was before I learned that everything in parenting is either a beginning or an ending. Right when you got used to some action or phase or stage, it ended. And another one began.

I'm hitting two new endings/beginnings—shall we rename them bendings?—this month. My boy finally left his adorable bulldog-like crawling style on the curb and decided that walking is a better way to go. And my girl, the one I couldn't picture doing anything but sitting propped up on my lap in her OshKosh overalls, graduated from preschool.

Let's tackle the boy's bending first.

I know some parents wait anxiously for their babies to walk. It is taxing to constantly carry ever-so-heavy kiddos around, and it gets REALLY old scrubbing floor dirt out of every hand crease and toenail nightly. But aside from getting that first tooth (which never fails to drive me to tears), walking is one of the hardest milestones for me to absorb. I am so thankful both of my kids walked late (after 14 months for both) because by that time, the exhaustion of the daily dirt termination outweighed my desire to hold on to the last vestiges of babyhood.

And that, in essence, is what ended the minute my boy got up, toddled to me, fell, then took off in the 10 feet between his grandmother and great aunt. Babyhood. My boy, who always looked older than his calendar age due to his large size, was undeniably growing up. Sure, he may have been wearing size 24-month onesies at a year, but he was still that tiny little creature I met one rainy February night and instantly felt like we'd known each other for a lifetime. But now, here he is, standing tall and walking stiff-legged like a drunk Frankenstein. Looking all the world like a toddler. A boy. Not a baby. That stage ended.

And the stage of walking, running, playing, shoes, jumping and skipping has begun.

A bending.

Every time this circles around, I remind myself that each stage has something to look forward to. The gummy smile looked heartbreakingly endearing, but teeth meant introducing new foods and enhancing nutrition. Crawling meant a lack of freedom for me (what do you mean you're not in the same place I put you when I left the room to pee?), but more freedom for the baby. And walking. This meant the end of the infant phase, and the beginning of so many more freedoms and fun times for both of us. Yet I admit, seeing my boy upright, toddling around, makes me fear the fast passage of the years.

But I try to keep the beginning in mind. The beginning of my boy the boy, not just the baby.

Stay tuned for the next chapter: preschool graduation (yes, I'm still crying about it).