I remember when I was a kid and I couldn’t wait to be a teenager. When I was a teen, I couldn’t wait for college. When I was in college, I couldn’t wait to be done, out on my own in the real world with a career and a glamorous life (still waiting on that glamorous life).
I feel like I’ve wasted the majority of my life waiting for something bigger to happen only to find that it’s not actually bigger or better after all, just different. To use a cliché, the grass was always greener a few years ahead of me.
It may be human nature to think that way, but I want to try to keep the same thing from happening to my daughter if at all possible. We just celebrated her fifth birthday and she was upset that she wasn’t a grown-up yet.
Her cousin, who’s six months younger, went to bed the night before the party crying because she’ll never be older than my daughter, and later because she wanted to be 11.
Not every moment of a childhood is going to be noteworthy. There will be temper tantrums (theirs and yours). There will be days you feel like you both just need to make it through, and you both trudge along, wishing for something more fun or, I don’t know, glamorous, to do.
But then there are those moments when you feel like you really connect—sometimes they pop up during homework, sometimes lying on a blanket at the park after a picnic when the sun hits just right, the temperature is perfect, and you realize just how magical those giggles sound floating out with the breeze.
Those are the moments you want to freeze. Point out little details. Point out the shapes of the clouds. Point out the way the breeze feels. Magnify those little moments so they join together to not only hold you both in the moment, but so they take root in your mind and stay there for later.
Photo credit: Pixel Pro Photography South Africa
