You Thought There Would Be More Time

You thought there would be more time. Not forever. Just more. More time before the first day of kindergarten. More time before they stopped asking you to tie their shoes. More time before bedtime stories became independent reading. More time before they rolled their eyes when you reached for their hand in public.

You knew those things would happen eventually. Of course you did. You just didn’t think eventually would arrive quite so quickly.

Right now, your days probably feel full in a way that’s hard to explain to anyone who isn’t living it. You’re keeping track of schedules and practices and appointments. Answering questions, finding missing water bottles, signing permission slips, making dinners, folding laundry, wondering if anyone else in the house knows where anything belongs. Some days feel so busy that you’re simply trying to make it to bedtime.

And yet, somehow, while you’re busy keeping everyone’s world moving, childhood keeps moving too.

That’s the part nobody prepares you for. Not how fast it goes. How quietly it goes.

Because the moments that leave you aren’t usually the big ones. You see the milestones coming — you know when the first day of school is, when the birthday party is, when they’re getting their driver’s permit. You brace yourself for those. You set up your camera. You cry in the car on the way home and call your mom.

It’s everything else that catches you off guard.

The way they used to climb into your lap while you drank your morning coffee. The way they mispronounced a word you never bothered correcting because you secretly loved hearing it. The bedtime routine that felt endless when you were exhausted and now somehow feels like it lasted five minutes. The questions from the backseat. The sticky fingers. The random stories that couldn’t wait until later. The hand that reached for yours in the parking lot without thinking twice about it.

Those moments never ask for your attention. They don’t announce themselves as important. Most days they feel ordinary. Some days they even feel inconvenient. And then one day you realize they’ve quietly disappeared — not all at once, just little by little, so little that you don’t notice until you’re already looking back.

That’s why motherhood can feel so bittersweet. You’re constantly living in two places at once. Part of you is trying to make it through today. The other part already knows you’re going to miss it. Not every second of it — nobody misses stepping on Legos or arguing about homework. But you’ll miss the way they looked for you first when something exciting happened. You’ll miss being the person who could fix almost anything with a hug.

The images that stay with people — the ones that make mothers go quiet when they see them — are almost never the posed ones. It’s always the in-between. The moment you looked over at your kid and your whole face softened. The one you didn’t even know was happening until someone showed it to you. I didn’t know that moment was there, they say.

That’s exactly it. The most important moments rarely feel that way while you’re in them.

These days are becoming memories right now. The ones you’ll someday wish you could step back into, just for a little while. Not because they were perfect. But because they were yours.

So on the days when you’re running from one thing to the next — when the laundry isn’t done and dinner is late and everyone needs something and you have nothing left — try to let yourself land, just for a moment, in the ordinary. Because those weren’t just routines. They were your life together.

And you’re still in the middle of it.