The days are long but the years are short

This is a phrase that was repeated to me time and time again when my children were young. Now that they are older it's time to take stock - did I enjoy them when they were younger? Or am I filled with regret those days are forever passed, and I should have listened to the wise words of the grannies?

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“Enjoy them while they are young; the days are long but the years are short”

There was a period in my life when I was convinced my days passed slower than the allotted 24 hours. It felt like my day had its own sun and moon rotating on a lazier circadian rhythm than the actual Sun and Moon that governed the rest of the world. Whatever the actual reason, each hour dragged, and when my bleary eyes checked the clock, I would give the clock a good shake to ensure the minute hands were still working. Then I inspected the back of the clock to confirm there were batteries. Yes. The clock was working. And only one hour had passed.

In truth this period only lasted four years, from 2011-2015. But what it felt like, oh, what it felt like was time had retarded. Time had molasses coated all over the underside of its belly and it inched forward, achingly, imperceptibly, through thick black tar.

During those years, each day was filled with the same mundane routine: breastfeeding, changing nappies, and soothing a baby for a nap. Sometimes I would put myself down for a nap, only because in those years I did not sleep. At least not in the proper, normal sense when one would sleep in the dark for 6-8 hours each night. To do truth justice, I probably had the requisite 6-8 hours per 24-hour cycle, but the sleep would be broken up in two or three installments.

Living with me during that time were my three children: a newborn baby and two precocious and energetic toddlers. When I took them out of the house, say, to the supermarket, what could have been a 30-minute errand by myself would take longer with my entourage. I estimate each child added at least 20 minutes to a simple task. Which meant a typical shopping trip would last close to two hours… and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet (is the clock working?). So we would wander aimlessly around Cyberport for a little while longer to buy time until lunch. Generally each wander would find us at my favourite spot: Starbucks. Many people gravitate to Starbucks, but I went to Starbucks soley for the high chairs. The coffee was the afterthought. In this particular store there were plenty of high chairs, and most of the time at least two would be available. I would plop each kid in a high chair and lock, each, one, down.

On days with pleasant weather the kids and I would spend our time at Cyberport Waterfront Park. There, I was a prime target for mothers with older children and grannies on their morning stroll through the park. Especially the grannies, it was as if I exuded a magnetic field which would suck them into my ether. They would look at me, nodding with affection and send me knowing smiles. Their eyes would survey my brood and then the grannies would detour from their path and toddle over to the tree where we sat. We had a large opened picnic blanket with bottles, plush toys and a mountain of tchotchkes spread over the canvas material. My litter of runts would be playing, dribbling, and gurgling with no apparent purpose but to make noise. And there I would be, in a half reclined position. Half reclined because I was too exhausted to sit up, but not fully reclined because I wanted to keep all the littles in my line of sight, in case a deviant one crawled away.

“Oh, my, aren’t they cuuuuuute!” a granny would coo. And then the inevitable question: “how old are they?”

“She’s three, he’s two, and the little one is just a year old.”

The questions were predictable, as were the responses.

“Oh, they are just lovely!”

I would give a half-hearted smile and say thank you. And then always came the clincher:

“Enjoy them while they are young! The days are long but the years are short!”

I grimaced. If I had a gold coin for every time…

I knew these words must hold some truth given the number of times I heard this phrase repeatedly. Always one to act on accurate advice, I would try very diligently to feel pleasure and gratefulness and transcending contentment with my situation. Enjoy them, Jen! Enjoy! Dammit, enjoy and smile! I panicked at the thought that in a few years’ time I would be racked with remorse for not having enjoyed my children more while they were young. And when the short years flew by and they became sullen, silent, pockmarked teenagers I would regret I didn’t more fully enjoy the permanent saliva dribble on my left shoulder.

But try as I might, I didn’t know how to enjoy my children more. Did it mean I should spend even more time with them? Given I didn't work for two of those years, I couldn’t technically spend any more time with them than I was. Did it mean I should banish every exhausted thought and force myself to meditate on happy thoughts only? Did it mean I should attempt to stop time altogether (given how slowly it was moving anyway, it wouldn't have made much material difference) and enjoy the babies in a frozen static state? These questions put me in a frenzy: I was incapable of understanding how to enjoy something more, when really, on most days, I was just very very tired.

The days are long but the years are short, goes the saying, indicating, even promising, that perhaps in the not-so-distant future my babies would grow up. From my half reclined position in 2015, it sounded like a glorious myth, and I frolicked in the fantasy one day my nappy-less children would use the toilet. There were whispers, oh glorious to my ears, that one day the children would sleep past 6am, and when they awoke, would entertain themselves and allow me to continue sleeping! And I even bore witness – because I saw with my own eyes – that children will one day board a school bus and go to full day school, leaving me blissfully alone for seven whole hours! Oh, how I wanted the short years to become even shorter.

And now? Now my children are all toilet trained (well, the oldest is nine years old), wake up independently and stay away from my bedroom door, and disappear to school for long stretches at a time (pre-COVID at least). And I ask myself the question I used to get asked: did I enjoy them? Did I fully enjoy their childhood and take hold of the enjoyment by the metaphorical horns? Or did the years whirl by in a blur and I missed the enjoyment? It’s a difficult one – I have no adequate answer. I’ve scoured Amazon and cannot find an Enjoyment Scale with which to measure my pleasure, nor a metric to quantify my Enjoyment Success. And so I think about the question from another perspective: do I have any regrets that I did not enjoy them more? Did I let the long days pass idly by?

No. No, I have no regrets.

I enjoyed their childhood thoroughly and extensively during those long, long, long days.