I wasn’t counting.
I was feeding you on the sofa in the dark, I was rereading the directions on a box of fish sticks. I was down the hall or high up in the bleachers, stranded in the pick-up line. I was listening in between dreams for a feverish cry or making another cup of coffee because the first one grew cold. I was trying to learn math again.
I wasn’t counting that the years would blur the memories, that the big moments would be mostly too grand to hold. The first day of kindergarten. Your ruddy face beaming, below a red and yellow party hat. Eight today, and then ten. In my mind you are forever twelve. The very last time I dropped you off at practice, stop here mom, I’ll walk. The bittersweet picture of the pretty girl leaning her head on your shoulder.
I wasn’t counting because there was so much to DO. I was busy, I was consumed, with devotion and investment and profound love, the kind that makes you forget to feed yourself. The kind that makes you want to write about it on Facebookor MySpace. The kind that makes you crazy and tired and lonely, sometimes out of your mind.
It is a lot of pressure to be told, “enjoy every moment.” Because as a parent we are mostly too busy living, to notice when a moment…is a moment.
Until suddenly it sneaks up, the feeling that there are so few moments left. One day I am preheating the oven and there is time to think—and so much less to do. And it is impossible not to notice as I serve the fish sticks and macaroni without you.
And this is when I start to count.
The first day of your senior year, the last first of so many firsts that hit cruelly every time, even when I think I cannot be hit any more. The fierceness of 18, braver and wilder, more grown than 16. Twenty-five dollars starts a checking account. Three hundred days until graduation. The last time you sleep in your bed down the hall.
And when there were no more numbers left, I curse time and cry for myself. How can I cry for you, as you begin your life, the one I was growing you up to live?
So I will lean into a new chapter, I will join a book club or get a tattoo. I will cut my hair or write a novel. I will drink my coffee, hot. But I will keep counting—the days until you come home for Thanksgiving, the times you call just to talk. And when you don’t call, I will consider that the silence means you are leaning in, too. That you are making it count.
Right now, you are looking up at me from the football field, making sure I was there. Playing your heart out. What a game. Every single game.
You are calling to tell me who's turn it is to boast after the last basketball game. Me not realizing it would be our last season to enjoy together under the same roof.
How fast it goes, my love.
I wasn’t counting on that.
