I blinked

I found myself in a parking lot yesterday at the very first field where my boys played recreational baseball—each when they were five years old. But I wasn't there to watch little boys practice throwing and catching. I was there so my youngest son could practice for his driver's test. 

I found myself feeling emotional as I watched these adorable little boys, weighted down with backpacks bigger than they were, head to and from the same field where I had spent so many hours over a decade ago. I was there with our first family dog, Griffey, the day we brought him home as a ten week old puppy. I was there with younger siblings in tow, who wanted so much to be part of what their big brother, the five year old, was doing. Just getting to sit on the bench with the players was a total thrill for the two-year-old who is now about to get his license. 

As I watched these young families and reflected on that time, I had two thoughts. First, I just couldn't believe how fast it all had gone by. I wished I had known at the time that, in what felt like the blink of an eye, I'd be over fifty and standing in this parking lot wondering where the time had gone. And second, I remembered how grating it could sometimes be when well-meaning people would look at me out in the world with my brood and say, "don't blink." I was likely exhausted and a bit overwhelmed as I wrangled my three active little boys and the last thing I wanted to hear was, "enjoy it because it goes by so fast." My day wasn't going by fast and the idea of more free time and less mini humans crawling all over mommy and running through the aisles at Target sounded pretty great. 

And it is great in lots of ways. Any parent with older kids can attest to that. But it's also a bit disquieting because of how right all of those kind strangers turned out to be when they saw me in a modern day episode of 'My Three Sons' and kindly admonished me not to blink. They had already been through this stage that I now find myself in and they wanted me to learn from their experience. They were sharing wisdom. But, like most things about having kids, you just can't really get it until you experience it for yourself. I certainly didn't. 

So as my youngest son drove forwards and backwards between the orange cones he had set up in the church parking lot by the baseball fields, my eyes toggled between this sixteen-year-old behind the wheel of our car and the tiny baseball players in the distance who looked exactly like my boys did, in that same exact spot, just over a decade ago. 

And wouldn't you know it, two words kept running through my head as if on a loop:

I blinked.