One strange thing about parenthood is that every passing phase feels permanent, even when things are changing almost every day.
I remember sleep training my 6-month-old daughter. I lay in bed clenching my teeth, feeling like her screams had gone on forever. Surely this was causing permanent brain damage — if not to her, then to me and her mother. Then I checked the clock. She’d been crying for twelve minutes.
That was the first of many times that I’ve found myself in a P.T.D.F. — “Parental Temporal Distortion Field.” For a while, I was convinced that I’d be changing her diapers forever. Then came the phase when I knew she’d never sleep in her own bed again. And, of course, there were those two weeks when she was doing that nervous blinking thing, which in my mind was the start of her lifelong struggle with Tourette Syndrome. These were all just warm-ups for her years as a snarky teenager, when it was clear that she’d never let me appear in public with her again.
I thought the good stuff would last forever, too. I was convinced that she’d always want me to chase her around the room pretending to be a monster. For the rest of our lives, I expected to be hoisting her up on my shoulders and making her laugh by talking like Donald Duck. Of course, I’d always be able to play catch with her, or get her to go feed the ducks with me. And most of all, she’d always be my little girl, with no interest in sex, drugs, or expensive hair products. Right? I mean, how could that ever change?
I think the P.T.D.F. exists because we and our kids really do exist on different timelines. By the time we start a family, the pace of change has slowed in our lives. From one year to the next, our evolution is incremental — thirty-something me wasn’t all that different from forty-something me. But over that same decade, my kids transformed from adorable little preschoolers to hormone-crazed adolescents with learner’s permits.
It’s difficult to maintain a close, intimate relationship with a creature that’s evolving like a shape-shifter in a science fiction movie. Your role in their life keeps changing. In the beginning, you’re their protector and provider. Then you’re their guide and mentor. For a while, you may be their oppressor and tormentor. Then, suddenly, you’re just a distant voice in their head as they venture out to make their way in the world.
Eventually, though, their timeline bends back toward ours, and things settle down. We and they develop a new kind of relationship, between two adults, and we get to shed the skins of those other roles and become something new to them. But just when we get used to this new equilibrium, it evaporates too. One day, you look in the mirror and you realize that you’re the one who’s changing. Now it’s your child’s turn to discover that nothing stays the same — not even you.
Last month, I went to visit my 98-year-old mom at the nursing facility where she’s winding down her long, full life. Every time I see her, she lets go of a few more memories and a few more pieces of our shared past – a few more layers of skin.
The day I arrived, she was alert, and she knew I was her son — though she wasn’t certain which one. The next morning, though, that awareness slipped away. She studied my face, trying to figure out if she knew me. When I told her who I was she nodded politely, as if I had said I was a new nurse’s aid, or the UPS guy.
Still, we spent a lovely morning sitting in a little garden under an orange tree. I would write something on a whiteboard, since she’d lost her hearing aids again, and she’d nod and smile, and say something completely unrelated. It reminded me of time spent with an infant — completely in the moment, with no goal or agenda other than to be in each other’s company.
After I wheeled her back to her room, I knelt down and kissed her on the cheek. Suddenly she looked into my eyes and smiled, then put her hand on my face. We stayed like that for a long time. In her eyes, I saw a look of recognition — not recognition of a son who had known her his entire life, but simply of another human being with whom she shared some sudden, miraculous, inexplicable bond of love. I’m guessing that’s how she looked at me the day I was born. I suspect that’s how I’ll look at my daughters when my own arc is nearly at its end.
