My oldest child turns 10 this year. Ten. It’s a weird feeling since I am definitely not old enough to have a 10-year-old, and I also have other ages down to four months. I’ve been reflecting on the last decade, trying to figure out what I would say to newer, younger moms.
We know what we hear most often from the most senior mamas. “Soak it in. Hold it tight. It goes so fast,” they tell us. I’ve tried to figure out why that can be such a frustrating thing to hear. It’s not that we don’t think it’s true. It’s that we absolutely know it’s true. We also know that even if we soak our hardest and hold our tightest, it will never be enough. It’s like trying to hold onto sand or bottle up the wind. Someday, despite our best efforts, we’ll be the older mom looking wistfully at the young woman with a chubby toddler, wishing somehow we’d been able to bottle up a little more. Hold on, a little bit more. And though we know this, it doesn’t make the hard things any easier.
In the morning, I sit with my coffee, trying to snatch a few minutes of quiet before the chaos ensues. Gradually, they come, one appearing and latching to my side, a few more squirming into my lap, bumping my elbows and demanding breakfast as I try to take desperate sips of coffee. They always seem to sense when I’m alone and appear like this, drawn to me like planets orbiting their sun. It’s both sweet and maddening. Though I know deep down that one day I will be a wrinkly old woman wishing for a toddler to demand to be in my lap or a child calling, “Mommy!” I can still feel the irritation rising, the longing for some distance.
But then I look at my memories app and pictures of them when they were all still chubby-cheeked babies. Looking at them feels like remembering someone you used to know (that someone used to ask me to do his piggies and now sometimes calls me “bruh”). Looking at them feels a little like deja vu—a feeling of achy familiarity that vaporizes as soon as you try to grasp it.
Because the distance I sometimes long for has already come. It comes the day they’re born, and it just grows in the same way a flower grows, so slowly you don’t notice it until it’s already happened. So, you look up one day and realize you don’t kiss their cheeks much anymore because you don’t carry them on your hips anymore. And then one day, you’ll look up and realize they don’t climb into your lap and you drink your coffee alone. The baby you used to spoon-feed will be pouring himself a bowl of cereal, and you won’t know whether to smile with pride at how far you’ve both come or weep for what you’ve lost.
I don’t know what to do with this tension, this longing for distance and the grief of it. It won’t be resolved and maybe it’s not meant to be. Change is both friend and foe. It is like the current of a stream, flowing mercilessly and mercifully over our lives, taking and giving, leaving behind pain and beauty, loss and gain. Like the shore of the stream, we don’t have much power over it. We just have to be shaped by it. We just have to release and receive again.
And just as they say, you never step into the same stream twice. I’ll never step into this day, this moment with my kids again. I can’t hold tightly enough to make it last. I also can’t condemn myself for not always wanting to. So, I’ll just let it be. This tension. The longing. The grief. The beauty. I’ll just let them be.
by Tara Fields 
by Jenni Brennan 
