After Christmas comes birthday season. I have three separate piles of secrets in a corner of my bedroom, according to three different sets of interests. By the end of February, we’ll have a newly ten-year-old, five-year-old and two-year-old.
In my mind, these each are milestones of sorts, so it’s a serious injustice that they’re all happening to me at once, and during a pandemic. I normally work out my angst about time’s passage via elaborately themed parties, but no such luck this year.
Ten! Obviously a big deal. Double-digits, a full decade! The soft round parts—shoulders, jaw, chin—all are visibly squaring. His mouth is filled with awkward adult dentition. The struggle with an eldest child is that they’re always younger than you realize. They feel so old so fast that they quickly seem gone, already beyond you, and you understand too late that they were still small. You still had a chance to relish that smallness but you lost it, missed it in all of your focus on his growing. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can catch it in the moment. You’ll notice it in the photos you took the same day, or you’ll hear it in his voice over the phone. But even then, it’s already sliding through your grip. With the kids that follow, it’s easy to remember how little they are because you have him for comparison. But him: he can only be compared to his smaller self, or his smaller brothers, so he looms big, bigger all the time, you only catch how small he was in the rearview. Ten is so big, and I’m sure I’ll only notice how small it was once he’s eleven.
Two is another clear milestone; he’s no longer a baby, officially entering toddler years. There’s no more counting his age by months, he’s outgrown all the stupid clunky contraptions meant to contain him or hold him upright, he uses silverware and brushes his teeth and (occasionally) says “please.” It’s likely this baby will be our last baby, and he’s our most beautiful one. Beautiful because when I look at his sweet round face, I see glimmers of the sweet round baby faces of his brothers when they were just as small. I squeeze him hard, as if I’m also sneaking a quick phantom snuggle from the long-gone baby version of three older boys. And now he’s two. No longer a baby, meaning we no longer have any babies.
But somehow, the transition to five is hitting me hardest, though an arbitrary milestone made up in my own head. It’s marked by teeny stupid things. You no longer shop in the younger section of the store, the sizes all paired with a T for “toddler.” He’s preparing for kindergarten, “real” school (at least, as real as school can even be right now). He carefully writes his name, the crooked letters slanting down the page. He’s counting and adding and learning to read, but all kids of all ages learn new things, this isn’t something to mourn, so why am I mourning it?
“They grow fast,” we know. It’s an odd time to confront my greediness for more time with them, now when my every moment is in their presence. But this isn’t the sort of time I want. I want more, more, more… just not like this.
"The struggle with an eldest child is that they’re always younger than you realize. They feel so old so fast that they quickly seem gone, already beyond you, and you understand too late that they were still small. You still had a chance to relish that smallness but you lost it, missed it in all of your focus on his growing. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can catch it in the moment. You’ll notice it in the photos you took the same day, or you’ll hear it in his voice over the phone. But even then, it’s already sliding through your grip. "
This part pierced me through the heart.
ok, crying into my cheerios this morning. This got me. Happy Birthday to your sweet boys and also to you, mama. <3