“We only have 8 more summers left with him at home, you know”, she confessed her subtle fear casually, conversationally.
I felt my own pulse quicken as I did the math. My son is older than hers, which means I have even fewer summers. Fewer years. Less time.
Some days of parenting go on like an endless blur of forever and other days time slaps us in the face, a sucker punch to the gut. It’s as if time passes in chunks and seasons, we never notice the sands slipping through the hourglass, we just up and notice a bunch of sand has gone missing.
Preschool graduation, she loses her first tooth, the boy turns 10, 13, 18, we all have different checkpoints, different wake up calls that rattle us deep and make us aware that time really is passing.
And then somehow we feel rushed and hurried. We feel pressure to get it all in, soak it all up and make all the memories. We grasp desperately for a slowing, a way to freeze time, a way to absorb more, give more, do more, before it’s all over.
I haven’t reached the years of grandparenting yet, but I can’t imagine that it’s all that different, watching another generation of offspring and seeing their chunks of time pass right along with your own. How many more years of sleepover at grandmas will there be? How many more family vacations while you are still young and healthy? I’m guessing the haunting of time is indifferent to age.
I appreciate the perspective that times give us – the gentle reminder that life is a continual state of change and progression. We need that awareness. But at the same time, a scarcity mindset is fear-based and can rob the joy from the days we do have.
Click here to join me over at the Huffington Post today as I share a cure for this fear we commonly buy into and let’s shift our perspective to seeing this time we have, each and every passing day, as a gift.
