It’s late. I just slipped in to check on my two sleeping children and stood there a moment longer than I needed to. When did they get so long in their beds? Then it hits me… and so here I am writing it down: parenting is the one place where ordinary people live inside the problem of time instead of just thinking about it.
Nobody tells you when it’s the last time. You’ll lift them onto your shoulders like you’ve done a hundred times before. You’ll set them down and you’ll never pick them up again. It’s like the training wheels just suddenly come off. And the strange thing is, that last time will feel like every other time, but nobody’s there ringing a bell to give you notice.
Maybe that’s what my emotions are fumbling with at the keys… the unmarked endings of parenting.
Most losses announce themselves. Funeral services, diagnoses, goodbye hugs. But the ordinary losses of parenting are comparatively silent. The last shoulder ride is invisible while it’s happening. You only discover it was an ending in retrospect, which means you’re constantly living through last times you can’t perceive. No dress rehearsal. Life is fired at us point-blank.
I am reminded in this moment of a prayer of Moses: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” It seems to me, in this moment at least, that numbering our days isn’t so much about counting down as much as it is about the humility of not knowing the count. And because we cannot know which moment is sacred, perhaps the only faithful response is to treat all of them as if they might be.
Maybe that’s what turns an ordinary Thursday evening bedroom check into a kind of sacred ground.
Endings are not necessarily design flaws. This loud, exhausting, hair pulling season of full-throttle parenting will one day be a memory. And knowing it’s not forever makes the present precious. The scraped knees, the endless questions, the increasingly creative messes – these aren’t the interruptions to my life. They ARE my life. Happening now. Once.
But it’s not just the scarcity of the seasons that hits me as I thumb this out. It’s that they’re entrusted to me. So, the truth I cling to is that, as my children grow and become increasingly independent, I’m not losing them so much as I’m releasing a stewardship… one unmarked last time at a time.
As for the fumbling emotions? Maybe that’s what happens when you realise loving your children and losing time with them were never two different things.
Somewhere out there, the 2036 version of me will give anything to stand where I’m standing tonight: tired, tripping over toys, needed.
So tomorrow I’ll take the long way home. I’ll read the extra chapter. I’ll let them be little, while little is still what they are.
