Time
Note: I wrote this when my son turned 2 years old. I find that with each passing birthday of his, it resonates even more with me. And makes me cry even more.
Time. It’s a funny thing. It can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
Time doesn’t discriminate; it affects us all no matter our race, age, or socioeconomic level.
You can’t touch it or feel it, but you can see time pass by: it’s in the notches on the door frame where you mark your kids’ height; it’s in the wrinkles on your face and gray hairs on your head; it’s in the tree in your front yard you planted as a sapling on the day you moved in; it’s in the way your baby boy progresses from a crib to a toddler bed to a big-boy bed...
Sometimes time passes slow; sometimes it passes fast. Which is odd because the rate at which time passes is constant.
When you have kids, somehow time manages to pass by, unfairly, at super-warp speed. It’s perhaps the only thing about a child that makes you mad yet isn’t their fault. You can’t put him in ‘time-out’ for growing up too fast. You can’t make him go to his room and “think about what you’ve done” simply because the one year he was a baby went by too fast and you, selfishly, want a do-over, a mulligan if you will, of those moments when you could hold him in your arms and smell the top of his head without freaking him out.
Today is Lucas’s 6th birthday. So today time is my worst enemy because I have no idea how Lucas managed to grow up so fast. And to do it right under my nose! While I was watching! The nerve of that boy!
But time is also my best friend today because I get to celebrate his life. In six short years he has become a sports-loving, Odd Squad-watching, video game-playing, Led Zepplin-singing, Go Go Squeeze-eating, book-reading little man who lights up a room with his smile and giggle. He all at once breaks my heart because he’s growing up so fast yet fills my heart with so much love because he’s my son. A piece of me. A piece of my husband. And 100% Lucas.
Happy birthday little man. Mommy and daddy love you.
Dana Vanhoy is a voiceover talent and creator of Lucas. She loves plain M&M's, coffee, and Jesus. Not necessarily in that order.