Cliff’s Notes and conversations

John DeSantis
Nov 15, 2019
3 min read

Sometimes the most random of conversations can be invaluable to parents and we often don’t realize it until those passing moments disappear in the rear view. This has happened a number of times over the years, usually when speaking with an older parent with years of well-worn experience. The really important ones you should try to put in your back pocket and take with you as you’re traveling the jagged terrain of parenthood.

One thing I recall hearing from a person at work stays with me today. I refer to them as “a person at work” as I wouldn’t even define them as a colleague. We’d often run into each other by the coffee machine and exchange trivial greetings. This was menial conversation probably about how free coffee was good coffee, that somehow drifted into the subject of our common thread as fathers. This man was older and had kids of his own, a seasoned veteran of this parenting business, a fellow navigator of the seas of chaos our kids control the tides of.

He mentioned to me one thing he remembers most from his kids being young many years ago were the crazy and funny things they would say. One thing he wished he’d done was write them down to look back on. It was easy now to remember how funny and incredible the things they said were, but nearly impossible to remember what they actually said. Some time after I stopped seeing him at work, he’d moved on and I didn’t even know his name, but he left me with a gem.

What I started doing around that time was jotting down random funny things my kids would say, and the date they said it. Not to embarrass them when they’re older, it’s more for me and my wife to be able to remember these crazy moments where the world is flashing by and they’re growing exponentially by the passing days, weeks, months, and years.

My wife has taken a similar, if more sentimental approach. Infrequently she’ll send notes to each of our sons on email addresses created for them to look back on when they’re older. She usually does this after significant events, achievements, birthdays, or just in the aftermath of something happening in their lives that we’ll want them to know was important to us in that brief time and place. Again it’s all the little things to them that we’ll be struggling to remember when they’re not so little anymore.

Another parent once told me in regards to raising young kids that the days are long but the years are short. While the hours crawl by in the day as you’re spending it with often out of control kids, feeling like you’d rather be somewhere else, you’ll turn around and wonder where the last 12 months went. Or you’ll glance at a photo and wish you had that smaller person wearing diapers back in your arms as the current time only calls for you to help them wipe after they announce they’re done in the bathroom. In the near future you won’t be wiping anyone’s ass but your own and you’ll wonder where the days, weeks, months, and years are going.

Enjoy it all, and in case you feel like you’re taking it for granted at times, take notes, take pictures, none of it is trivial if it’s important to you. It’s never too late to start. Remember how you feel about those days now, even when they once seemed like no big deal at all.

You’ll want to remember such profound musings and points of wisdom a child might offer while itching themselves as “I got boogers in my butt,” or universal questions like “Daddy, why do you have a beard in your nose?”

Listening to this playlist:

Arcade Fire “Everything Now,”

Bob Dylan “Born In Time”

Filter “Take A Picture”

Jack Johnson “You Remind Me of You”

The Kinks “Picture Book”

Neil Young “Old Man”

Lenny Kravitz “This Moment Is All There Is”

John Mayer “3x5”

Ben Folds “Sentimental Guy”

Otis Redding “It’s Growing”

Brandi Carlile “Save Part of Yourself”