Impermanence

There’s an odd sense of time that settles in when you watch your child grow. Each day feels full—so much happens in the smallest moments—but at the same time, it all slips away before I can grasp it. I see it when my son, once so tiny and still, now reaches for toys, his eyes wide with discovery. A part of me wants to press pause, to hold him here, in this stage where he needs me so completely. But time is already moving him forward, away from the softness of these early days.

I thought I understood the pace of life before he was born. I thought I knew how time worked. But becoming a parent has shown me that time is not a steady current; it’s a rush, unpredictable and unforgiving. Each milestone—his first smile, the way he’s learning to hold his head up—feels like a victory, but it’s also a reminder of what we’re leaving behind.

There’s a weight to that, heavier than I expected. I feel it when he drifts to sleep in my arms, and I know that one day he’ll no longer fit there. I feel it when he explores the world from the safety of his play mat, unaware of how soon he’ll outgrow even that small space. These moments that fill my days are already fleeting, gone before I can truly hold them.

Parenthood, I’m learning, is a lesson in impermanence. Not just in the way time passes, but in how we’re meant to experience it—fully, without trying to make it last. These moments aren’t meant to be kept. They’re meant to change us, to leave their imprint on our hearts as they slip away. And that’s the hardest part: knowing I can’t slow it down, no matter how much I want to.

As I watch him now, his tiny hands grabbing at the edges of the world he’s discovering, I’m struck by how temporary this all is. Soon, he’ll be crawling, walking, running—moving through life on his own. And yet, there’s a kind of peace in that. Time is doing exactly what it’s meant to do. It doesn’t pause, and it shouldn’t. These moments—these small, beautiful, everyday moments—are precious because they’re temporary. They shape us as they pass, changing both him and me in ways I can’t always see yet.

It’s not the big milestones that will stay with me the longest. It’s the quiet, tender moments—the way his fingers wrap around mine, the sound of his breath when he’s tucked against my chest. These are the moments that matter, the ones that will linger long after the years have rushed by. And I’ve realized that the gift of time isn’t in trying to slow it down. It’s in letting it move as it should, trusting that the love we pour into today will be carried forward, even when this moment has gone.

Because in the end, it’s not about capturing time. It’s about letting it shape us, knowing that each passing moment holds the power to change us forever.