Time is such a weird concept. Sometimes a minute can feel like an hour, sometimes an hour can feel like a minute. I used to feel like I had all the time in the world. This was of course before I turned 25, when, I suppose, most people feel like they have all the time in the world. Nine years later, at 34, I feel like time is running out, partly because, well, I’m 34, and partly because as a parent, there’s so much in the world I need to teach my daughter about, that I’m not sure I’ll have the time.
It is also kind of pressing because, frankly, I don’t remember much about the last five months or so since she was born. It’s kind of a blur. And I ask myself, how the hell did five months just pass, without me noticing. I drink very rarely these days, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep through it.
The first thing you notice when you have kids is that time seems to disappear. You remember being busy all day, but you don’t really have anything to show for it, except a (hopefully) smiling baby, and a few more diapers stinking up the garbage. And since the days vary very little, other than the occasional milestone the kid hits (this week it was Baby Girl getting up on all fours for the first time), one day is fairly indistinguishable from the last. Which to some extent explains where the last five months went.
The second thing you notice is that even though it has only been five months, it may as well have been forever ago that you didn’t have a kid, because life before the kid seems like distant memory. Having time for yourself, your significant other, your career, your hobbies, your life, is a distant memory. Everything you do is packaged into varying chunks of time between feedings, naps, changings and those brief interludes where you get to sleep.,
I don’t know where this next part comes on the list, third, fourth or maybe eighth, but she’s almost 6 months old. Which assuming she either goes to college, hates me and moves out, gets a job and moves out, or some variant of the above three, means I only have another 35 more 6-month periods of time to spend with her. And while at some point I’m sure I’ll be ready for her to leave, right now, that 17.5 years just doesn’t seem like enough time to spend with her.
Then there is the realization that of the 18 years I’ll (hopefully) have direct control – as much as any father really has over the little princess that has him wrapped around her little fingers – there are about five of those years (the 13-18) where she’ll be dating, and I would gladly trade five years of diapers, baby puke and screaming for five years of having to threaten her possible boyfriends with extreme physical violence and waiting up worrying about whether or not some ill-mannered little chump is trying to paw at my Baby Girl.
You also get a sense of mortality when your kid comes, because, up until now, I kinda figured I was going to live forever. At least, I never thought far enough ahead to think that I was going to ever die. Now of course, all I can think of is how I’d better be nice to this little ball of volatile bodily fluids, because one day she’ll be picking out the retirement community I’ll dodder away my old age in. And while that seems like a long ways off, the gray hairs given to me by my woman, my own stupidity, and by my Baby Girl, are beginning to suggest otherwise.
Right now, however, it is time to go to bed.
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