Turning Around

I always heard that one day I would turn around and my baby would be all grown up. Changes in her are difficult to see. I see her every day. I study her face. I know expression. Her sounds. Her size. The weight of her body in my arms. The texture of her hair as I run my fingers through it. Every day I study her. I can easily identify the exact moment I hear a new sound. Or see a new skill. Or witness a new expression.

Under such close familiarity, it's true that changes are difficult to miss. But sometimes it's also hard to see certain things. I'm so close to her, I'm not really able to step back and think about how far she's come, how grown up she is getting to be.

Until a photo I snap stops me in my tracks.

Here I see a hint of the precious girl she is growing to be, and less and less of the sweet baby I've known. There's something about her smile, the light in her eyes, the gloriously disheveled hair, that I somehow miss when I'm so close to her, day after day, night after night, laughing and sharing tickles and kisses.

That single photo made me turn around, made me remember that every day, every hour, every breath she takes, brings with it growth and change. The baby she is today is not the baby she'll be tomorrow. And one day, soon, she won't be a baby anymore at all. She'll be a toddler. Then a young girl. Then a teenager. Then an adult. One day I'll turn around and it will be her as a bride staring back at me from the picture. The same smile. The same light in the eyes. But so very different at the same time.

So what now? Now that I was turned around to my big girl who is growing up literally before my very eyes?

Now nothing. There's nothing you can do in the face of the flow of days. There's no sense in weeping at the passage of time. No sense in lamenting its relentless march onward. You can no more stop a river by standing in the middle of it, arms outstretched, trying desperately to catch the water as it flows by, than you can hold onto your baby as a baby. And what's worse, if you do fight it, if you spend your time mourning the loss of youth, you miss what time you do have now. It's a vicious circle--you spend your time pining over how fast your child is growing, and you end up missing those five minutes, or that hour, or however much time you spend thinking of the future or the past or any moment but the here and now.

So what did I do?

I did nothing. I returned to playing with my silly girl, with my funny baby, with my energetic and goofy child who cracks me up and delights me and thrills me. I loved her in the moment we had together, these days where she sits on the brink of babyhood. I loved her and soaked up every second of her that I could and didn't pay any mind to the passage of time, didn't waste any of our time together thinking about any moment other than right then.

Time will pass. She will grow. Rather than trying to hold onto each day, each moment, I stood in the stream with my arms outstretched and focused on the delight of the feeling of the water as it flowed by my fingers. Far from trying to stop it, I instead celebrated the sensation of it passing.

And what an incredible sensation it is.