PHILIPPINES: Life is short, life is long
© Lianne Bacorro Photography
Wow. It’s been a lifetime since I last contributed to the blog. My last post was after I had just given birth. After that, things totally took a turn for the busy! And now, my second child is a year old, my eldest just recently lost two of his teeth. Already I’m feeling like I am on the short end of the stick when it comes to time! Just the other day my husband and I realized that, in four years, our eldest would be ten years old. Ten years old. I can’t even begin to fathom what I’d do.
When I watch my kids, I notice how they live in each moment. Have you ever stopped to watch your kids do the same?
It’s different for each child. I have a one year-old baby girl and a fidgety, curious six year-old son. Each day seems to stretch on forever for my six year-old, like when he anxiously awaits a new toy or the arrival of his cousins visiting from out of town. (This past week, his long wait has been his dental appointment, which we’ll go to later today.) After last Christmas Day, he asked how long it would be til the next one and sighed how it would be “forever” until we got there.
For my daughter, it’s like each minute is precious, and five minutes is an eternity away from me. (She’s a high need child, you see.) She cries when I step into the bathroom for a shower. (I’ve mastered those 2 to 5 minute ones, have you?) She complains when I leave for a meeting for an hour. My mother once said, “Imagine if your source of food and drink left you for a couple hours. How would you feel?”, and I now understand my daughter, haha! Poor thing.
We recently had a photo shoot at home with a photographer who specializes in unstyled, “day in the life” pictorials. It was a refreshing shoot, because there wasn’t any time set aside for makeup or hair, or vignette styling or wardrobe changes. It was just us, whiling the time away doing our everyday duties of play, work, rest and play again.
“Why would you pay someone to take photos of you when you’re just in your house clothes?” someone asked me on social media. In my head I replied, “Well, why not?” Because of time constraints and a clingy baby and a rambunctious preschooler and a busy-with-a-new-biz husband and a home in need of care…. I have literally no time sometimes to grab a camera. I should, but I had a friend who took on the task instead. And I’m glad she did, because I saw in those 200 or so photos what I realize I often miss or gloss over any ordinary day. It’s not the activities — I notice those, of course. It’s what threads our days, the feelings of delight, frustration, love, and passion that I sometimes don’t notice. Perhaps I needed someone else to look from the outside into our ordinary everyday, so that I could see just how much I get wrapped in time.
I watched this video recently, which perfectly describes why it feels like time speeds by the older we get. I appreciate the perspective here, and I can vaguely remember how time seemed to stretch on forever when I was a child! But very vaguely, really, like a distant memory. I only hope that as time goes by, I will like my children, live in the present.
I hope to not take each life-stage for granted, and not waste time navel-gazing, grumbling or losing myself to the squabbles of the mundane.
“Life is short…
Life is long…
but not in that order.”
I couldn’t have said it better.
How do you feel about time going forward, moms? How do you view time alongside your children’s point of view?
This is an original post by Martine De Luna for World Moms Blog.
