Time Is Slipping Through My Fingers Like Sand

 

I did not expect to struggle so much as a father with my kids getting older. Lamentably, my memory is very poor and I only have little snippets of mental vignettes in my mind from when they were young. I do not, cannot remember. It is distressing. I feel like a lost man searching his mind for his kids, and I cannot find them. This is why I struggle to write as well, because the pool of details in memory to draw from is very shallow. There is no shortage of material to work with when you have memory. So I write from the present, but long to write the past as well, a past which is dispersing like vapor faster than I can preserve it.

My oldest two are teenagers now, while the youngest is 8. I know every parent goes through this at some point, but I was not prepared for it, the speed at which time accelerates. Next year the oldest will be driving. Maybe a job. Then college. Then...what? I am sad. I also am struggling to keep up with the changes. I want to hold on to them, control everything like we did when they were toddlers, but to do so would be to stunt them. 

Letting go is very hard. So, whether it is fair or not, I hold my youngest tight--I stroke his cheek and slip my hand in his. I have him fall asleep next to us in bed sometimes. I try to record his little voice to preserve it. He is the last, and when is grown there will be no more. 

I also am not sure I could have handled more than three kids. God knows. I know He gives the grace, but grace builds on nature. The Epistle at Mass on Sunday from 1 Corinthians: He will not let you be tested beyond your strength. We had seven miscarriages along the way. God knows.

I lost all my photos in a botched iPhone transfer last Fall. It was pretty traumatic, and in fact I am considering looking into EDMR therapy to deal with what has become a real problem in my life lately--being triggered by tech. I am standing still as the world is rushing by me. I am getting left behind. My wife has a good amount of photos on her phone, but I almost want to print the best ones out, keep them physical and in a album in our family room. I don't want to Zoom, I want to hug. I don't want to Facetime my grown kids, I want to hear them chew and laugh at the kitchen table. I don't want to be locked out of life, which is becoming increasingly digital. I am scared. I cannot keep up. 

It is very hard to live in the present, because the present is constantly shifting. We can take our time in the past, linger in memory; we can create futures for ourselves, make ourselves anxious or sick with longing. But the present is flitting, requiring constant attention, focus, and awareness. By the time you seek to hold on to it, it is gone. You cannot hold on to the present. And so each day I get distracted and my kids get one day older, one becomes two, to weeks and months, and then they are almost slipping out of my grasp. I am not a controlling dad, but I do have fear--fear for what my kids are being launched into--and fear is not of God, is antithetical to trust, which God requires of us to live in faith. 

I was watching Terrance Malick's Tree of Life last night, a beautifully shot meditation on memory, past, nature, and grace. The opening monologue contrasts "the way of Nature" with "the way of Grace" and that one must choose which one they will follow. Jack (Sean Penn) is a middle-aged corporate executive trying to make sense of his present by reflecting on his past growing up with his mother, father, and brothers (one of whom died at the age of 19) in Texas in the 1950's. The way of Nature is reflected in Jack's father (Brad Pitt)--loving yet authoritarian, teaching the boys discipline and that the world is a hard place where you need to be on your game to survive. Jack's mother is the way of Grace--gentle, caring, empathetic. There's no real "point" or plot to the film, but the meditative aspects reminded me that memory is composed of those subtle moments that take place in the present--the trace of a mother's finger across her sleeping son's chest, the evening sun piercing through the pine trees, the sound of the screen door closing. The day their brother died. 

Without memory, or with it being so compromised, I feel as if I am disappearing. I want to remember because I want to preserve, be a good custodian of the my past. Everything is moving by so fast, and I can't stop it, can't stop my kids from getting older, nor would I want to. I just want to hold them in the present, and keep the memory from that now-past for my future self.