At the end of the month, Ollie is going to turning eight-years-old. He will be entering third grade in the fall. Like every single year as his birthday approaches, I don’t feel that I am ready for this.
Tanya Tucker sings, “The days are long, but the years are lightning.” She’s so right. The past eight years were filled with slow moments, times that I wished would faster, but the years are flipping by. Each year that Ollie gets older, I worry about how much less I can protect and how much we haven’t gotten done.
It was tough not to be around all the time when I went back to work after my paternity leave was up.
I worried about how he was cared for in daycare. You learn just to push those feelings aside and try to focus, and they never completely go away.
I still think about him from time to time and wonder if he’s doing okay when we are apart. As much as I’m proud of his growing independence, I really like doing things for him. Diana pushed him, rightly so, to get his own milk to drink, while I’m happy to get it for him. I don’t think it is spoiling me. Part of it is that this something that makes me feel better because there’s so much time that I can’t actively be taking care of him.
There’s never enough time to do all the things that you want to do with your child. Even when there is time, the energy to make things happen is fleeting. I wanted to do a lot of things with and for Ollie have been put on pause because of this pandemic. This helps us a way to slow things down, but I worry. There are books to read, music to learn, and adventures to experience. When I see that birthday coming, I worry about wasted time when I didn’t engage with Ollie as much as I could have.
As Ollie gets older, things that I do, things that he does, seem to have more consequences for the rest of his life. The responsibility evolves where trust becomes more important, and guiding choices for Ollie as opposed to making choices for him is a switch that I need to make. I’m excited, but I’m also nervous.
For most of my teaching career, I taught third-graders, and the Ollie entering this grade brings together my professional world and my personal life. This age that I studied, and taught, and worked with is the age Ollie will become, and it will be interesting to see how my experiences teaching this age inform how I am as a parent to Ollie in this coming year.
When I was in grade school, I’d to this point in the spring when everything felt perfect. Then the school year would end, and the following year would begin, and it would be tough. Eventually, though, things would start feeling comfortable and predictable, and I wouldn’t want anything to change. With Ollie, it’s the same thing. When I have things figured out, I get to this point, I have a grasp on what he needs from me, and when he gets older, I falter, and I stumble. I eventually figure it out, and once I get there, we are on to the next stage.
Comfort and joy only come through struggling through discombobulation and fear. We need the cycle to find meaning, and for me, parenting propels this cycle forwards and brings me to be a better me. So sooner than later, I’ll be hugging my eight-year-old and forgetting that feeling of worry and just being so happy that he’s in my life. And no matter how he gets, he will always me special little guy.
No comments:
Post a Comment