Parenting at the speed of children

I can't keep up with my kids.

When I became a parent it was whether I was ready or not. I wasn't. I thought I was, but alsa, i was not. What can prepare a person for this? Books? Therapy? Pet dog? Nothing. I entered in unprepared, and then with the title and responsibility of being a parent, these (wonderful) children of mine who made me a parent became a moving target that refused to sit still. They insisted upon growing up at what I have now determined is an unsustainable pace. They keep growing into situations for which neither they nor I are prepared to handle - only I am the one who notices this lack of preparation. The reality is that there is no preseason for parenthood, no scrimmages, no practice children to try parenthood out on. When you have children, it is game day, every day.

There is no getting used to this. It has been my experience that my children change faster than I can adapt to their change. Just prior to getting a grasp on one new thing they are on to the next. There is no getting used to this stage, because this stage is gone by the time its presence it detected. There is no time to detect, contemplate, adjust, and normalize anything. In making any effort to slow down and contemplate the current event I notice that I have missed something else. I have learned I must grow fast because fast is the only way my children grow. 

No reflection. The way I experience life is that I have the in the moment reality of what is happening in real time. In general, it is all I can do to be in the moment. But like heavy rain on my lawn, there is only so much life I can take in each moment before the majority of the experience becomes runoff. It's not that I don't want to soak it in, but rather than I do not have the ability. I need time to reflect, complate, make meaning, and turn experience into story. It takes a long time for me to do this and my children will simply not stop changing, growing, and moving along long enough for me to having any idea what just happened to me. I want to stop and smell the roses, to cherish each moment, and to just sit and enjoy the beauty of the moment. I almost never get this. Being a parent means living a double life, mine and theirs, and it means life approaches at such a speed so as to allow for little reflection. 

Never enough. I have been a parent for nearly 17 years and have come to realize that I will never arrive at some point in which I will conclude that I have done enough. Parenting offers no arrival. My work is not now done, nor will it ever be done. I will not brush off the dust from my hands and conclude there is no more to do. Once a parent; always a parent. 

There goes my heart. In becoming a parent, part of my heart was born into the flesh of another. I feel the loss of part of my own heart as it fills another. Part of my heart is at the mercy of another and goes out inside another and therefore I will be there, wherever there happens to be at any given time. It is not a portion of my heart that I can ever retrieve, nor will I ever desire to retrieve it. And even though I know that my heart is in another and I cannot and do not desire to have it back, there is the ever present experience of not having all my heart to myself. There is an ache and a vulnerability that runs deep and mysterious and beautiful. I cannot have it back, but I do want it close.

I love being a parent. I love my children more than I ever imagined I might - and I had imagined quite a bit of love. I wouldn't want life any other way.