The other day I came across a video re: TikTok, Instagram Reel etc of a mother that was going on about TLDR- stop getting frustrated at your young kids because “it” goes by so fast.
Normally I cannot stand this trope, and truthfully I couldn’t stand it while watching but I have to be honest- I did find myself tearing up towards the end. Sure, it doesn’t take much for me to cry, and as much as I hate anything that resembles mom/primary/birthing-parent shame-inducing PSAs, I was like, oh shit. How many more years do we actually have of *this*.
Dear reader, you should know that there are years of my own life and my children’s that I don’t remember. Fragments of memories that keep me tethered to my own reality; Yes, you were six months old at one point and I know this because I can see us nose-to-nose in my bed in the condo we lived in. I don’t remember Maddox’s first steps outside of the video I was shown by his daycare provider. I remember tears streaming down my face as we drove back home, feeling the loss of not being there to witness firsthand. But the actual steps? The ones I know he eventually took with me? The whole first 18 months of his life? Pixels at best, and same goes for his sister.
These facts haunt me. It’s true what they say- the days are long but the years are short. But what happens when you don’t remember the years? I have no interest in the shaming of anyone, especially not parents, but I would be lying if these facts- days long/years short, combined with my patchy memories, didn’t have me trying a little bit harder to not snap when I have a toddler screaming bloody murder in my ear because I called him by his first name which means I have ruined his life, and it isn’t even 7 am.
Maddox, just like Scarlett, will stop creeping into our bed at night just like she stopped asking to sleep with me, and then with us. Like the last time I put either of them in a baby swing, or wore them strapped to my chest/back, or breast-fed them. This is all obvious, they grow and they age, just like we do, and it presents with a whole new slew of challenges. But damn, it really does just go. and go and go and go.
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