You’re eating a pancake on the windowsill, looking like you’ve been caught doing something wrong. Knees pulled up, feet turned in, hair curling every direction like it always does after a nap. There was something different about you that just said, “I’m a kid, I’m not your little baby anymore.”
People told me this was coming. My mother said it, my friends said it, women in church pews leaning across the aisle said it. “Enjoy it, it goes so fast.” I nodded and meant nothing by it. It felt like a phrase people said because someone said it to them and now it’s just something kind to say but is simply expected.
But it’s moments like these that bring me to believe it now.
I believe it because I go looking for pictures of you as a baby and can’t remember the weight of you in my arms, only that I held you like that once. I believe it because I watch another dad care for his baby who is only just learning to crawl meanwhile you’re sprinting across parking lots and refusing to hold my hand. And I feel a pull in my chest with no other name but grief. Grief for something I complained about eighteen months ago. Grief for a version of you that only exists now in videos I don’t watch often enough.
I tried to tell that dad to enjoy it. “I know it sounds cliche…” I started to say. I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. I remembered exactly how it landed on me, and realized some sentiments only mean something once you’ve already lost what they describe.
And so I allow myself to focus on the enjoying, and the noticing, and the aching, all at once, the way every parent before me has, the way every parent after me will.
For now, you’re on the windowsill. The light is doing something to your hair I won’t see again after today. You’re looking at the camera like I’m interrupting your pancake.
I am interrupting you. And I’m sorry. And I’ll do it again tomorrow.
Westerman.Blog 