Growing Pains

Everyone told me the days would go by too fast. They told me to pay attention. They said to enjoy these days because someday I will miss them. I feel that urgency now that you are nearly eight months old. I already feel the days carelessly slipping away from me like the blue satin blanket I try, yet fail to hold on my shoulder to cover myself as I feed you. Calendar pages flutter through this year, just like they do in the movies. I record your milestones in the tiny calendar boxes like a nurse records a patient’s vitals. I mentally catalog each of your milestones with a mixture of relief and satisfaction and dismay. You ate your first solid foods. Check. Bananas are your favorite. You already try to bring the spoon to your own mouth. You learned to crawl two days ago. Check. At first you rolled, scooted, and rocked your way across the floor. Not now. Your four-legged stride is not confident yet as if you are not even aware that you have managed it. Yet you have, and it happened overnight. Today I found you standing tall in your crib. Check. Your smile told me you were proud of yourself. You knew you’d accomplished something new. We don’t need words with expressions like yours. I was proud, too. I hope you always know that. I am almost too proud of you.

I try to remember what it felt like to hold you when you were one month old. Two. Five. The months feel messy, the memories melding like a badly separated egg. I grasp for that yolk of perfect memory so hard it oozes through my fingers. And that makes me feel cracked.