Bigger, Bigger, Grown

There was a moment that struck me first when my daughter was an infant, and has continuously struck me at the most random times since then - this realization that, particularly before they are mobile, babies are completely and utterly dependent on you for life. In other words, even though you now draw breath outside of the security of my womb, you still cannot live without me. Usually I'm left with a sense of awe and fear at the weight of that.

I had a dream one night that my son was put into the ocean to drift. It was awful. I won't go into the specifics, but suffice to say that when I awoke it took everything in me not to wake him from his slumber, and tell him I would never leave him - let alone allow him to be sent off to the ocean as a helpless babe. What part of our wiring brings us to a place of such vulnerability that we cannot fathom drawing another breath without squeezing out little ones and breathing them in - just to make sure they are real, safe and ours?

Heartache takes on a new meaning once you enter parenthood. It means that you live life knowing that an extension of yourself lives outside of you. And as you watch that person grow, you are constantly torn between fear and pride. You are hypersensitive to the passage of time, because you are constantly swapping out smaller for bigger, shorter for taller.

As a three-year-old family friend informed us, "I'm getting bigger and bigger every day!"

I'm convinced that nothing will ever make my emotions as raw as imagining my little girl grown or my little boy as a man. Something about the passage of time, especially in regards to offspring, mystifies us in a unique way. A way that I'll never figure out, because no matter how many times we say "they're growing up before our eyes", we can't understand it, we can't stop it, and it proves itself true every day.