Time flies...it’s beautiful, it sucks
- John DeSantis
- Feb 20, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 25, 2020
We live in a digital age where families and their every activity, vacation, event, outfit, band aid, haircut, dump, and opinion among many other things are plastered on virtual walls. We get those little notifications of what we were doing on this day last year, or 3 years ago, or if we’re feeling especially self-loathsome, 7 or 8 years ago. Take photos of your kids, print them out, make a book of them, it’s fairly cheap and easy to do online and many places can even have it ready for you same or next day. Keep these things close, out in the living space, and show them your kids (if they’re at an age they won’t tear the thing to shreds like a raccoon on food scraps in a dumpster outside of Taco Bell).
Some days it’s easy to yell, to lose patience, to get annoyed, to hide in the bathroom and try to convince your wife what you did really took 30 minutes. Have those photos handy as a reminder. Look at how fast these kids have grown since that moment, and once you get over the sadness of life zooming by at light speed be happy knowing that it’s moving so quickly because this really is a journey like no other that is indescribable, with highs and lows you could never imagine. Be grateful you’re there in that moment and able to realize it. And if it took some time to realize it or if your kids are older and you feel like you didn’t realize it, be grateful you’re seeing it now.
These moments won’t happen again, your child’s face won’t be that small again, there will come a night where they don’t need you to sit in their room waiting for them to fall asleep because they’re scared of the shadows on the wall or their little brother kicking them in the face. One night you’ll wonder why they’re not crawling into your bed at 3am overtaking precious mattress real estate and much needed sleep. Then they won’t crawl into your bed again, because they’re growing, right before our eyes, with every passing minute of every day. They’re more hardened and ready for this world than the day before.
It sucks to be us, but it doesn’t, because it means we’re doing our job as parents. We’re getting them ready for a world at large in which we’ll play a smaller role for them. We’ll be lucky that they want us to play any role at all. Appreciating all the days and minor milestones, the ripples and the big waves that got us to that point will give you greater joy and appreciation in the present and little to regret in the future.
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