Time

When our son was small, we timed his crying.

Not always. And not for long. (If it went on too long, past our pre-determined idea of how long was too long, we swooped in to rescue him.) But during that time when he was figuring out how to comfort himself as he fought and eventually gave into sleep, the waiting was torturous. It felt like he was crying forever. One night we wondered how long forever was, and so turned on a timer to document eternity.

Eight minutes, as it turns out.

My relationship to time has changed dramatically since becoming a parent. As a stereotypically "punctlich" girl of German descent, I have had to adjust my ideas about time, both in my approach to my own activities and in my ideas about time as they relate to parenting.

For one thing, I try to leave myself more time. I start getting ready to leave WAY before I think we need to, because, well, socks will be rejected, jackets will be AWOL, bathroom visits will be declined and then suddenly demanded, and tempers – mostly mine – will fray.

And I try not to rush D without good cause. Someone pointed out to me that a child's life must sometimes seem as if they're simply being dragged from one thing to another, desperately trying to keep up on their little legs when all they really want to do is squat down and get a good luck at that dead spider.

This first weekend in December has become the traditional time for my holiday bake-a-thon. In order to help me pull this off, and because she enjoys hanging out with her nephew, D's Aunt Chelle comes down for the weekend and largely whisks him away. (T, of course, is stapled to her desk reviewing applications.)

For this weekend, I am suddenly "sprung" from what has been one of the harder parts of parenting for me... keeping track not only of my needs but also of D's. Since he was born, this has meant that I have a kind of low-level awareness of a secondary clock. Not just when I'm hungry, but when he's hungry. Not just when I'm tired, but when he is. As the old mom joke goes, "I'm cold; put on a sweater."

Today, when I needed to return a movie, I just went and did it. True, when I got back I had two timers going, to remind me of which racks of biscotti needed to removed or turned, but they were timers that I had set, so it felt different somehow.

Someday, I'll get a chance to sleep in again. But I'll probably have forgotten how.

(Many thanks to the women of Mama Says Om
for their continuing inspiration.)