Magic Tricks

Sometimes I feel stuck in some sort of Copperfield-ian sphere where nothing is really what it seems.  My friend just had a baby and of course I can barely talk about him without lactating into a puddle of nostalgia.  Toby and Charlie were babies like last week, right?    That’s how it feels anyway, which leaves me scratching my head when they jump over the couch and eat pizza like big kids.  Time, that tricky little marvel, surprises me again.

Mothers of adult children always say the same thing,  “It goes by so fast…” I hear this in the church lobby as I lollop to the donut table, my children dangling from my calves like enormous leeches.  I know it goes by fast. I know. But I’m still lulled by each day’s averageness, dolloping ketchup and sorting toys as if that will be my forever.   

This morning, autumn was tangible.  Breezy air wisped through the house while we went about our business in freshly unpacked sweatshirts.  It has already been a year since we folded our fleece hoodies into an empty diaper box for the summer.   It doesn’t seem possible.

I remember trick-or-treating last fall with Charlie in the stroller, pushing him from door to door behind his brother.  The stroller! I mean, isn’t it sitting in the garage corner behind a bunch of stuff we actually use?  One day I strapped Charlie in the seat for the last time, an unceremonious end of an era.  How did I not know?

Tonight, I sat down beside Charlie before he went to sleep.  I rubbed his cheeks while we sang Happy Birthday to his lamp, the wall, his stuffed bee.  Sometimes I rush these moments, impatient for my own time.  I wish I didn’t.

These years really are fleeting– my gosh, it is Toby’s fifth fall.  Next year he will be in school, making friends and finding independence.  I hope I gave him all I could while I had him to myself. 

Outside the front window, our Bradford pear blooms and withers and blooms again, measuring that metaphysical something that I can’t quite understand.  Maybe I don’t want to.

Tags: Motherhood