That advice: “Enjoy it, it goes by so fast,” in reference to my children’s childhood, brings up a lot of emotions for me. Bear with me. I promise I’m not going to be a jerk about this… by the time I’m done.

My first reaction when I heard/hear that advice is to recoil. Especially at the beginning when they were babies, I HATED this advice. My mental response would be something along the lines of, “LOOK CLOSELY AT ME. WOULD YOU ENJOY THIS?!” I knew I looked exhausted, bags under my eyes, food on my shirt somewhere, no doubt. I felt tired, depressed, not myself. I did not enjoy the baby days. I love my children, but I guess I’m not a baby person. When my first son was 4 months old, just the thought of doing it again, of having another child, actually brought me to tears. I’m so happy to have had our second son, but the idea of doing baby days again when I was in the middle of it sounded absolutely terrible. So someone telling me to enjoy these days sounded insane and actually made me a little angry, or at least annoyed.

Yet the advice persisted. Well-meaning parents of older children would look at my boys, and I could tell by their wistful smiles that they were no longer seeing MY kids but were picturing their own. They remembered holding sweet little hands and kissing tiny, smoothe foreheads. They heard gleeful squeals and imagined first wobbly steps and crookedly written first letters. They remembered not just the good times but the best times. 

Memory is a funny thing. Each time a memory is recalled, it changes. It goes through the lens of the events one is presently experiencing, and each time it’s recalled, it’s seen through ALL of the lenses. So someone with adult children has remembered their children’s littlest years hundreds of times by the time they see me with mine. What they remember isn’t actually how it happened, but that doesn’t make it wrong. It also makes it not at all about me. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that the advice is said for their own benefit, and not in a bad way. Time goes by fast, and I think what they might mean is actually, “Don’t take it for granted, even when it feels bad.” THAT is some advice I can listen to, and it’s how I’m going to choose to take it.

My older son will be 5 this summer. I’m having the “I can’t believe he’s so big” kinds of thoughts and have found myself wondering how 5 years could’ve gone by in 3 blinks. I’m starting to get it, and I know I’ll feel it even more strongly as both of my boys get older. I might choose not to give the “Enjoy it – it goes by fast” bit because of my early reaction to it, but honestly, I’ll probably mean it.