We parents regularly agree and discuss ‘how fast the time goes’ and how fleeting our moments are with our children. But I was talking with a new dad recently and he said that sometimes he wishes the time would go a bit more quickly – during those sleepless nights or those clueless days of new parenthood. His new daughter was 5 days old when I saw him. He and his wife are in the bleary-eyed stupor of having their lives turned upside down by the amazing miracle that is their daughter. (As an aside, this dad mentioned that he hasn’t yet changed a diaper and his daughter is 5 days old. Not ok, but I digress.)
So as our children are aging at breakneck speed, I’m concentrating on enjoying every moment and focusing on the present. “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you`ll look back and realize they were the big things,” said Kurt Vonnegut. Brilliance here – that can be applied to everything, and especially parenthood.
Don’t get me wrong, I had my long days of parenthood when the children were young. While I loved every age, I certainly had moments where I had ordered enough pretend coffee (89 cups were enough) through the playground ‘drive through’ invented by our daughter in the look-through space under the slide. Or moments when I had lined up my six thousandth little car in our son’s invented roads that ran throughout the house. Or sleepless nights. But more than these were the moments where I couldn’t get enough. Catching our daughter off of the slide: Couldn’t she go just one more time, her bouncing blonde curls against my cheek each time I caught her? Or pushing our son on the swing: His belly laugh that I just wanted to hear one more time, and one more, and one more…
I found some fascinating research today that has demonstrated the importance of the ordinary. It turns out that “shopping, playing in the park, or reading are the kind of everyday activities that give young people…a better sense of value and well-being” according to the study completed by the University of Leicester. Well gee, that’s powerful stuff: That we can create meaningful time, quality time, and positive time through plain old, ordinary activities of life. Wow.
While our daughter loved being out and about and doing errands, our son felt differently. In fact, he detested these activities. Grocery shopping, getting gas, or picking up the dry cleaning were decidedly not his preferred activities. My mom would offer to stay with him (because she’s wonderful that way) so he didn’t have to partake…but I always wanted him to be part of the drudgery. It wasn’t that I wanted him to suffer, it was more about the power of the ordinary. My theory was – and is – that our relationships are built in the cracks of time – in the moments of the ordinary. Time together isn’t only about quality, it is also about quantity. In the ordinary, we have those interesting and important conversations that can only take place in the car. We share discussions (and take actions) about choices and values. We demonstrate how we feel about others through our interactions with them – from the checkout person at the grocery store to the attendant at the car wash. Most of all, we build a sense of proximity and accessibility with each other.
My thought is that in addition to learning about each other in these moments of the ordinary, we also build our mosaic of our lives and of those around us. When I look at our daughter, I see her 17-year old self and it is richer for the embedded images of her chasing seagulls down the beach at top speed, squealing joyfully all the way.
Our son isn’t just his 13-year old person, but also the 6 year old riding his bike with his stuffed dog ‘Pal’ tied to the handle bars.
Whether it is our children or our friends or our families, our experience of them across plenty of time and experiences and dimensions fills out our understanding of who they are and what makes them, them.
And this brings me back to the new dad I was talking to this week. At one of their well-child pediatric visits for his then 5-day old daughter, he asked the doctor whether he should be doing anything for their daughter in order to ensure her healthy development. Exercising her legs, or reading to her? Oh my. She was only days old. With all due respect to eager parents and knowledgeable experts who recommend really good, good things like reading to babies and spending plenty of time in play, I think we need to just relax a little. Let us work less hard at doing things right and perfectly as parents. Let us spend less time worrying about development and more time just loving our kids and simply spending time together in the magic of the ordinary. It all goes so very, very fast. We don’t want to lose time to the worry of quality time when really it’s mostly about loving each other during the supremely ordinary moments of life.