How can my son be a year old already?
My son turned one last week. The day marked the end of has been both the longest and shortest year of my life. I haven't slept for a year and I don't really know how time works any more. From the instant he was born, it's felt my son has always been part of this family.
How is he one already? First he was born, and was a sleepy ball of flesh then, and now in his place is a little boy who walk and has teeth and knows how to switch off the television at precisely the most important moment of anything I ever try to watch. It's not exactly (extraordinary) development in all of human history — child gradually gets older — but it's the first time I (see) it close up. It's honestly quite hard to grasp. Even photos of him (take) last week seem like a different boy. He's leaving milestone after milestone in his tiny parts of me along with them.
He'll never again be the tiny baby who lay in my arm, (suck) on my little finger in the middle of the night while his mum slept, will he be the baby amazed by the taste of solid food. Soon enough he'll stop being the baby who rests his head on my shoulder whenever he gets tired, or laughs uncontrollably whenever I say the word 'teeth' for reasons, I don't think I'll ever work out.
But I've had a year of this and it's ok. He's never going to stop changing, and I don't want him to. This sadness, this constant sense of loss, of time slipping just your grasp, is an important part of this process. He won't realise this, of course. He's got years of unbroken progress ahead of him, where everything will always be new. Years of his life will pass in a moment and he won't be able to understand where they've gone.
But it's ok. You can't freeze time. You just have to make the most of what you have.
