“They grow up so fast”: Frances Whiting on parenthood clichés

When you first have children, you will be told at some stage by people “enjoy this time, they grow up so fast”.

When you first have children, you will be told at some stage by people – all people, it doesn’t matter who; your parents, the bloke at the fish and chip shop, the woman in the line next to you at the supermarket – “enjoy this time, they grow up so fast”.

Or a version thereof, including the more lyrical “the days are slow, but the years are fast”.

All of these adages are true, and all mean absolutely nothing when you are knee-deep in the babyhood trenches, and a day when having your hair washed, teeth cleaned and clothes not on back to front counts as a major triumph.

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Nevertheless, when you are told this advice in the line at Aldi, you will nod sagely and pretend you are listening. You are not listening, you are just trying to stay upright.

You will do this for the next few years and somehow, even as your children
(despite your parenting skills or lack thereof) do indeed start to grow at a rapid rate, you will somehow miss large chunks of it.

There will be plenty of signs, some so bleeding obvious you will wonder how on earth you didn’t spot them, but that is the nature of parenthood.

There will be first steps, first days of kindy, first wobbly rides of a bicycle without you running, panting, beside it, first days of school, and all the while those pencil marks you have made on the wall tracking your child’s vertical progression through the years will inch ever higher. Oh, you notice these moments, of course you do, but you don’t hold on to each one.

Not for long, anyway, because you have to do the next thing – and there is always the next thing, isn’t there?

Frances Whiting. Picture: David Kelly

Breakfast, daycare, at-home care, making lunch, packing lunch, making dinner, clearing up after dinner, washing, ironing, driving to play dates, to the doctors, to the dentists, buying shoes, fitting shoes, buying uniforms, losing hats. Losing so many hats.

Trying to get to work. Working from home. Racing to get to school, pick up, stop, drop and go, go, go for years.

Until one day, you will find you have a proper moment to exhale. A moment when you look across at your child, and realise that all those people were right. That the years have indeed flown by; that they felt slow but went so fast – that it seemed like just yesterday you were bringing them home in
a baby capsule.

It required an engineering degree to fit into the back seat of the car. But somehow you did it. You wrestled it into position, clicked all the belts into place, looked down at your baby nestled like an acorn in a soft pink blanket and drove them home. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

Then the years speed by and you look across, like I did just this morning, at the acorn I brought home all those years ago.

And you get your moment to hold on to. My daughter. Behind the wheel. Yellow L plates freshly attached to the windows.

My girl, on her way.

Originally published as “They grow up so fast”: Frances Whiting on parenthood clichés