Hold On to Every Moment—It Goes So Fast

Fourteen years ago, my husband and I were still getting the hang of being new parents. One day we had packed the diaper bag, loaded the car seat, and carefully strapped in our newborn for a family shopping trip. After sleepless nights, we were starved to get out of the house and feel normal again. Our first little boy had been a preemie, and for the three weeks he spent in the NICU, we measured his growth in ounces and fractions of inches. At birth, his tiny ankle was the same size as my thumb. His entire little body was as long as my forearm.

At the department store, between the racks of clothing, a man approached us, and congratulated us on being new parents.

"Hold on to every moment—it goes so fast," he smiled, before he turned and left.

"Wasn't that sweet of him to say that?" I said to my husband. We smiled satisfactorily at this new inner circle we had stepped into, simply by having a baby.

But then the second baby came, and the third. And the fourth. At any given time, I was breastfeeding someone, or changing a diaper. More often than not, I had throw up or snot or poop smeared surreptitiously on my clothing. And it seemed wherever I went, a well-meaning older, wiser parent would come up to me, pat me on the shoulder and say, "Hold on to every moment—it goes so fast."

"Why does everyone keep saying that to me?" I'd complain to my husband. "It's so patronizing. Do they think I don't understand how fast they grow up?"

But the truth was, I didn't. How many times, when the kids were babies, did I think to myself, "I just can't wait until they're grown up so they can feed themselves/wipe themselves/clean up after themselves/drive themselves.

This past Mother's Day, my oldest son came up to me as I was pouring my morning coffee.

"Happy Mother's Day, Mom."

I was looking my son in the eye. In the eye. His voice is starting to creep down into the lower register, and he is beginning to take on that look of a young man.

Last week I visited a friend of mine, who is a brand new mother. I got to hold her newborn baby, who opened his deep blue eyes just for a few moments to look at me before drowsily zonking out in my arms in that wonderful newborn slumber that I remember so well. I looked into his sleepy face, and listened to his quiet little coos and smelled the warm sweetness radiating off the fine, downy hair on his head. I squinted my eyes and tried to imagine him as a toddler, pulling all the toilet paper off the roll and draping it across the house—for the second time that day. I imagined his toothless grin he'd have when his baby teeth started falling out in elementary school, or the day he'd tower over his mother with his hands on his hips saying, "Why can't I borrow the car?"

The words were right there on my tongue. I wanted to say it so badly. I wanted to tell the new mother how fast it goes, how she'll look up one day and see her son's eyes looking right back at her and she'll wonder where this little baby went. But I didn't say it to her.

She'll find out for herself.