We are getting ready to move away from our current duty station. We sold our house and we've bought our next house. We have packers coming here, contractors scheduled there, hotels booked. All of the months and weeks of planning are all finally coming together to now: Go Time.
It is always weird to me when I get ready to leave a place. I start looking at things that I took for granted-- and possibly even disliked-- differently. The other morning I was walking up to our house after getting the newspaper and my bare foot stepped on a pebble on our driveway. I bent down to brush it off and heard the birds chirping, the sound of a car starting up the street. I heard my kids screaming at each other inside the house-- probably over who's turn it was to pick a show. I was struck with nostalgia. Our house felt so alive in that moment. Our street radiated familiarity. I could almost smell home, the entire state of Washington, and spring itself. Standing there, I took a mental snapshot and told myself I would remember this, this feeling, this moment. This sense of calm. The smell. The sound. The literal feel of the driveway digging in one foot and the soggy, damp Washington grass on my other.
I want to hold on to those memories. To always have them at the forefront of my mind, for them to be as tangible to me later as they were when they happened. It feels like such an easy thing, like TimeHop for your brain.
I've been having a lot of those moments lately.
The other day I was kicking one of those giant yard balls with my 3-year old in our backyard. You know the kind that you get at Target that are $2.99 and in that giant vertical cage and you have to birth it through the bungee cord jail bars? My kids love those balls. So we are kicking this thing back and forth to each other. He is doing huge round up kicks that he runs into, slides into, swings his leg into. The ball is flying left, right, at my face, over my head, not moving... It's very active and intensive being part of this. I'm laughing at his antics. The ball flies between us with a satisfying and echoing thunk with each kick. I kick the ball to my 3-year old and start to take a step forward when suddenly my 1-year old daughter is directly underfoot. I nearly topple her over and I catch myself somehow. I laugh outloud and exclaim, "Whoa, baby thing!" That's when she tilts her head back and looks up at me with her clear blue eyes, says perfectly (her speech isn't the best), "Paw?" and then shoves her little hand (her "paw," as we call it) up above her head, reaching out for my hand (or, rather, my "paw"). I'm telling you, my heart melted. I looked into her eyes and I thought, "I will never forget this." I will never forget my heart beating so fast from running back and forth with the 3-year old. The smile ready on my face. The sun shining above us. This backyard. The feel of the grass under my shoes. Tripping over our 1-year old and then those eyes. Her little hand reaching into mine and the way her fingers clasped through my palm. Once she had her hand in mine, we raced around together kicking the ball back to her brother. Granted, I moved a lot slower and so the ball shot past us more times than when I played on my own. But she laughed and I laughed and the 3-year old thought his soccer skills had somehow vastly improved, now that all his shots were going through. It felt a lot like a 3-legged race holding her hand and running after the yard ball.
I want that memory forever. I want to feel it like I did when it was happening. I want to always know exactly what my daughter's 23-month old hand feels like laced through mine. I want to feel the weight of her arms wrapped around my neck exactly as they were 6 months ago. Or right now.
Our 3-year old recently potty trained (woo!). So I'm taking him to the bathroom every night now before I go to bed. He is our 4th son so I've done this nighttime potty run 3 other times before him. When I first started it with him I didn't think much of it. Honestly, it was something I had done with our other 3 sons and part of the potty training process, but not an event that felt special to me. As I've been doing this night after night, I realized I was looking forward to the moment that his "big boy" body became a "little boy" body once again. It happens each time I pick him up from the cozy warmth of his bed and I pull him up into my arms in the cool night air, away from his covers, and drag him into the sterile brightness of the bathroom. He curls into me. It was such a small, subtle difference in body movement that I didn't realize he was doing it right away, until a few nights ago and it hit me that I had already forgotten how he used to carry himself. I had forgotten our 3-year old as a 2-year old, as a 1-year old, as an infant. I thought of him as our 3-year old, almost 4-year old. Really, he had transitioned from a small toddler to a "big kid" preschooler right under my nose.
Being a mom of 5 children, I have seen how quickly that time slips between my fingers. I hold on as tight as I can and when I finally open my hand to see what I'm grasping, it is empty. Our oldest son will turn 10 this summer. TEN. I'm sure parents with older kids are rolling their eyes-- ten? Big deal. It's big to me. Big that we are finally entering the double digits. I still can't believe it.
When I think of saying good-bye to this house we've been living in for 3 years and our 5th and last baby turning 2 years old and our 4th son potty training, I realize my 9-year old used to be that small. Not in the abstract way that parents sometimes talk about, "Oh, remember when you were that small?" No. Really. My 9-year old once transitioned from the "little boy" pick up to the "big boy" pick up. He once went from toddler to preschooler and from preschooler to kindergartner and from kindergartner to elementary kid. It happened slowly. His knees knock together just a little less. His smile is a little more guarded than it used to be. It happened, slowly, when I was folding laundry and driving carpool and teaching him how to cook and showing him how to style his hair and how to change a diaper. Day by day as we sat together doing homework and sounding out words. He grow from being ridiculously small in my lap to almost my same size. I borrow his t-shirts now and he borrows mine. I don't know how or when we got here, but I have those moments with him still when I am running around and laughing about something else and he suddenly catches my attention and tilts his face towards mine and I see those clear blue eyes and I am struck still. Struck still as his hand reaches for mine and I feel his fingers-- once so small that my hand wrapped not just around his palm but also around his wrist and forearm-- interlock with mine. And I think, "I will never forget this moment."
The sad thing is we do. These snapshots, these videos in our mind. The sounds, the smells, the feelings. They drift. Until we think of our kids as they are now, today. It is then that we say, "How does it go so fast?" And everyone laughs and dismisses that. Or maybe they agree because they also don't know. Parents say, "I never thought I'd be one of those parents who say, 'Where does the time go,' but, really, where does it go?"
I say it. I say it almost every day. I don't know how we went from "I think we should start a family" to these 5 beautiful children bickering in my living room every morning. I don't know how our last baby is almost 2-years old and we have donated our high chairs and the only baby gates we have are for the dog. I don't know how every last one of my kids is now officially out of infant sizes and into toddler and youth sizes or how we are talking about next summer finally being out of diapers for good. I have been changing diapers for literally a decade now. A DECADE. I have had between 1-4 kids at a time in diapers consecutively for ten years. What is life like outside of diapers? And diaper bags? I can't even wrap my head around all of these changes. I'm excited for them. I love watching my children grow, but I have had enough kids now to know that we do forget.
We move on. We can't stand on the driveway observing and cataloging and processing for our whole lives. We eventually walk in the house and shut the door and get on with life. As with each of our moves, I'm excited and nervous about all of the upcoming changes ahead of us, with our move and with our children growing. I am trying to look at the present without focusing too much on what's ahead. It is easy to get caught in the details, in how great things could be at our next duty station or when our kids are a bit older. It is easy to get excited over passing things, things I don't care for at my current duty station or the current age my kids are at.
As with each age and stage our kids have outgrown and as with each duty station we have moved away from, I am always surprised at the things I miss when I look back. I don't know if it is funny or sad the things I miss. I wish that the snapshots I take in my mind were the things that flood my memories when I try to reflect on the past, but it's usually obscure things. For instance, I can vividly remember walking out of one of my favorite coffee shops one day at our first duty station when it had started snowing. I absolutely loathed that duty station and the climate. It was so cold. That day in the snow I felt like, "Dammit. It's going to ice over again." In my memory though, I can feel the hot tea through my gloved hand and smell the lavender seeping in the water. I remember the crisp air as the snow started to fall and the magical way the flakes flutter to the ground. The ground was slippery and was about to ice, but living somewhere else, where that doesn't happen as much, it feels almost romantic reminiscing on it. The things I want to remember and the things I tried so hard to remember are less tangible. We lost our first pregnancy in that apartment and brought our first baby home in that apartment. I do remember crying over those when we moved away from that duty station, feeling like those memories would be left in that apartment. To some extent, they were. I can't remember taking my first pregnancy test and I can't remember the first weeks home with our oldest son very well. They pass in a blur. I get clear flashes of those memories when I see photos, but they are more fluid.
Our children will keep growing and I know we have a few more moves left ahead of us with my husband's Naval career. Eventually I would love to settle down into a home that will help me hold on to some of these memories. Eventually I would love to be able let some roots grow and trust that the walls of our house will help preserve these memories that feel so fleeting. It's hard to watch it slip through my fingers.
It goes too fast.
It is always weird to me when I get ready to leave a place. I start looking at things that I took for granted-- and possibly even disliked-- differently. The other morning I was walking up to our house after getting the newspaper and my bare foot stepped on a pebble on our driveway. I bent down to brush it off and heard the birds chirping, the sound of a car starting up the street. I heard my kids screaming at each other inside the house-- probably over who's turn it was to pick a show. I was struck with nostalgia. Our house felt so alive in that moment. Our street radiated familiarity. I could almost smell home, the entire state of Washington, and spring itself. Standing there, I took a mental snapshot and told myself I would remember this, this feeling, this moment. This sense of calm. The smell. The sound. The literal feel of the driveway digging in one foot and the soggy, damp Washington grass on my other.
I want to hold on to those memories. To always have them at the forefront of my mind, for them to be as tangible to me later as they were when they happened. It feels like such an easy thing, like TimeHop for your brain.
I've been having a lot of those moments lately.
The other day I was kicking one of those giant yard balls with my 3-year old in our backyard. You know the kind that you get at Target that are $2.99 and in that giant vertical cage and you have to birth it through the bungee cord jail bars? My kids love those balls. So we are kicking this thing back and forth to each other. He is doing huge round up kicks that he runs into, slides into, swings his leg into. The ball is flying left, right, at my face, over my head, not moving... It's very active and intensive being part of this. I'm laughing at his antics. The ball flies between us with a satisfying and echoing thunk with each kick. I kick the ball to my 3-year old and start to take a step forward when suddenly my 1-year old daughter is directly underfoot. I nearly topple her over and I catch myself somehow. I laugh outloud and exclaim, "Whoa, baby thing!" That's when she tilts her head back and looks up at me with her clear blue eyes, says perfectly (her speech isn't the best), "Paw?" and then shoves her little hand (her "paw," as we call it) up above her head, reaching out for my hand (or, rather, my "paw"). I'm telling you, my heart melted. I looked into her eyes and I thought, "I will never forget this." I will never forget my heart beating so fast from running back and forth with the 3-year old. The smile ready on my face. The sun shining above us. This backyard. The feel of the grass under my shoes. Tripping over our 1-year old and then those eyes. Her little hand reaching into mine and the way her fingers clasped through my palm. Once she had her hand in mine, we raced around together kicking the ball back to her brother. Granted, I moved a lot slower and so the ball shot past us more times than when I played on my own. But she laughed and I laughed and the 3-year old thought his soccer skills had somehow vastly improved, now that all his shots were going through. It felt a lot like a 3-legged race holding her hand and running after the yard ball.
I want that memory forever. I want to feel it like I did when it was happening. I want to always know exactly what my daughter's 23-month old hand feels like laced through mine. I want to feel the weight of her arms wrapped around my neck exactly as they were 6 months ago. Or right now.
Our 3-year old recently potty trained (woo!). So I'm taking him to the bathroom every night now before I go to bed. He is our 4th son so I've done this nighttime potty run 3 other times before him. When I first started it with him I didn't think much of it. Honestly, it was something I had done with our other 3 sons and part of the potty training process, but not an event that felt special to me. As I've been doing this night after night, I realized I was looking forward to the moment that his "big boy" body became a "little boy" body once again. It happens each time I pick him up from the cozy warmth of his bed and I pull him up into my arms in the cool night air, away from his covers, and drag him into the sterile brightness of the bathroom. He curls into me. It was such a small, subtle difference in body movement that I didn't realize he was doing it right away, until a few nights ago and it hit me that I had already forgotten how he used to carry himself. I had forgotten our 3-year old as a 2-year old, as a 1-year old, as an infant. I thought of him as our 3-year old, almost 4-year old. Really, he had transitioned from a small toddler to a "big kid" preschooler right under my nose.
Being a mom of 5 children, I have seen how quickly that time slips between my fingers. I hold on as tight as I can and when I finally open my hand to see what I'm grasping, it is empty. Our oldest son will turn 10 this summer. TEN. I'm sure parents with older kids are rolling their eyes-- ten? Big deal. It's big to me. Big that we are finally entering the double digits. I still can't believe it.
When I think of saying good-bye to this house we've been living in for 3 years and our 5th and last baby turning 2 years old and our 4th son potty training, I realize my 9-year old used to be that small. Not in the abstract way that parents sometimes talk about, "Oh, remember when you were that small?" No. Really. My 9-year old once transitioned from the "little boy" pick up to the "big boy" pick up. He once went from toddler to preschooler and from preschooler to kindergartner and from kindergartner to elementary kid. It happened slowly. His knees knock together just a little less. His smile is a little more guarded than it used to be. It happened, slowly, when I was folding laundry and driving carpool and teaching him how to cook and showing him how to style his hair and how to change a diaper. Day by day as we sat together doing homework and sounding out words. He grow from being ridiculously small in my lap to almost my same size. I borrow his t-shirts now and he borrows mine. I don't know how or when we got here, but I have those moments with him still when I am running around and laughing about something else and he suddenly catches my attention and tilts his face towards mine and I see those clear blue eyes and I am struck still. Struck still as his hand reaches for mine and I feel his fingers-- once so small that my hand wrapped not just around his palm but also around his wrist and forearm-- interlock with mine. And I think, "I will never forget this moment."
The sad thing is we do. These snapshots, these videos in our mind. The sounds, the smells, the feelings. They drift. Until we think of our kids as they are now, today. It is then that we say, "How does it go so fast?" And everyone laughs and dismisses that. Or maybe they agree because they also don't know. Parents say, "I never thought I'd be one of those parents who say, 'Where does the time go,' but, really, where does it go?"
I say it. I say it almost every day. I don't know how we went from "I think we should start a family" to these 5 beautiful children bickering in my living room every morning. I don't know how our last baby is almost 2-years old and we have donated our high chairs and the only baby gates we have are for the dog. I don't know how every last one of my kids is now officially out of infant sizes and into toddler and youth sizes or how we are talking about next summer finally being out of diapers for good. I have been changing diapers for literally a decade now. A DECADE. I have had between 1-4 kids at a time in diapers consecutively for ten years. What is life like outside of diapers? And diaper bags? I can't even wrap my head around all of these changes. I'm excited for them. I love watching my children grow, but I have had enough kids now to know that we do forget.
We move on. We can't stand on the driveway observing and cataloging and processing for our whole lives. We eventually walk in the house and shut the door and get on with life. As with each of our moves, I'm excited and nervous about all of the upcoming changes ahead of us, with our move and with our children growing. I am trying to look at the present without focusing too much on what's ahead. It is easy to get caught in the details, in how great things could be at our next duty station or when our kids are a bit older. It is easy to get excited over passing things, things I don't care for at my current duty station or the current age my kids are at.
As with each age and stage our kids have outgrown and as with each duty station we have moved away from, I am always surprised at the things I miss when I look back. I don't know if it is funny or sad the things I miss. I wish that the snapshots I take in my mind were the things that flood my memories when I try to reflect on the past, but it's usually obscure things. For instance, I can vividly remember walking out of one of my favorite coffee shops one day at our first duty station when it had started snowing. I absolutely loathed that duty station and the climate. It was so cold. That day in the snow I felt like, "Dammit. It's going to ice over again." In my memory though, I can feel the hot tea through my gloved hand and smell the lavender seeping in the water. I remember the crisp air as the snow started to fall and the magical way the flakes flutter to the ground. The ground was slippery and was about to ice, but living somewhere else, where that doesn't happen as much, it feels almost romantic reminiscing on it. The things I want to remember and the things I tried so hard to remember are less tangible. We lost our first pregnancy in that apartment and brought our first baby home in that apartment. I do remember crying over those when we moved away from that duty station, feeling like those memories would be left in that apartment. To some extent, they were. I can't remember taking my first pregnancy test and I can't remember the first weeks home with our oldest son very well. They pass in a blur. I get clear flashes of those memories when I see photos, but they are more fluid.
Our children will keep growing and I know we have a few more moves left ahead of us with my husband's Naval career. Eventually I would love to settle down into a home that will help me hold on to some of these memories. Eventually I would love to be able let some roots grow and trust that the walls of our house will help preserve these memories that feel so fleeting. It's hard to watch it slip through my fingers.
It goes too fast.
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-Kimber