Missing It

I can’t believe it’s been a year. Where did the time go?

How can he be two? How can I be thirty-one?

These are the things we say every year, shocked, always shocked at the unswerving persistence of time. And here I am again, looking at the calendar, watching the pages fall like each month is as weightless and insignificant as another leaf blowing, curled and used up, off the branch of a tree. It CANNOT be October again.

With time shooting by so fast, how can each moment, each little daily responsibility seem so important at the time? How can the mire of the present seem so thick when it is so transparent, so ephemeral?

This is one of those things I struggle with. When I come home from work, I want to soak up my time with the kids, to catch up on all the stuff I missed in putting in my 40 hours. But, almost every night, I find myself distracted and missing the moments I should be there, really there, with them. It can be anything that pulls me away, the TV, the computer, laundry, dinner, the husband I never see. Before I know it, they are heading off to bed, and I am halfway asleep myself and trudging up the stairs with the acidic burn of regret in my stomach as I replay my day.

I keep thinking that I get it. I keep thinking that the beauty and the gift of having a child like Lincoln is that it’s teaching me to pay attention to what’s really important and let the rest go. And then I go and spend an hour on YouTube or Facebook while my kids are tugging on my pants and begging me to get down on the floor and get messy with them. Why is this so hard? Why do we all say the same things every year, shocked that time has got the better of us again when we knew we were supposed to be paying attention this time?

I was thinking the other day about that scene in “Hook” when Robin Williams is talking on the cell phone, making business deals and generally ignoring his family, and his wife gives him this great speech. I looked it up (ironically wasting my time online in trying to remind myself why I shouldn’t waste time online), and this is what she tells him:

“Your children love you. They want to play with you. How long do you think that lasts? Soon Jack may not even want you to come to his games. We have a few special years with our children when they’re the ones that want us around. After that you’re going to be running after them for a bit of attention. It’s so fast, Peter, so few years. And you are not being careful. And you are missing it.”

I don’t want to be missing it. Every night I take Lincoln to bed, I press his little body against me and think that I didn’t get enough time with him that day. He has this way of wrapping himself around you completely, pushing his tiny frame against you with more force than it seems possible for a 20 pound bean bag to produce, holding on for dear life. All the way up the stairs, he clings to me with that almost desperate intimacy. I put him in his crib, he curls up in a ball on his stomach, and I shut the door behind me, instantly feeling sick with longing for him.

And yet, when he is awake, it always seems there is something else to grab my attention. Why is it so hard to remember what is important and ignore what is insistent?

I’m trying to remember not to miss it. I don’t want to look back on the years when our children were young with that same feeling I get when I close Lincoln’s door at night. I don’t want to regret missing their youth because I was busy thinking of a clever status update for my Facebook page. Because already, I can feel that we get so few years. Lincoln is two. How can that be? Nico is three going on thirty. I just know that I’m going to blink and they will be gone, off living their lives, and if I don’t watch myself, I will be left with that feeling of missing it.