Enjoy It While It Lasts
I’ve been reflecting on the topic of discussing my children with strangers since my last post. A few days ago, I was reminded of another common phrase people say to me when I am in public with my son and daughter which is, “Enjoy it while it lasts.” I learned something from this phrase this week.
My children and I were sitting on the white sandy beach two miles from our house, the tide high, which is my absolute favorite time to bring little children to the beach. The skinny shoreline is only a couple of steps to the water which is convenient for several reasons including cooling off. Since my kids are still quite young, and my oldest is afraid of crabs and sharks, they only enter until about waist deep. This equates to them staying within a five foot radius of me at all times. It allows me to lean back and get comfortable in my beach chair. I steal a quick casual couple of photos to remind myself we actually made it here without Daddy. I crack a can of seltzer, which my daughter refers to as bubbles and place it in the cup holder on the side of the chair. I retrieve a book from my bag. I never read more than a couple of sentences, but you get the picture. There’s lounging involved in going to the beach with a four and one year old. I’m not chasing after them. I’m not throwing whatever is in my hands into the sand, like my book or phone, when it’s low tide and I see my son taking off toward the water, already a half-mile down the beach.
The flip side to the high tide is that it allows little space for anyone to squeeze by us without having to veer into the water and get their feet wet as they search for an opening to sit on the sand. People pass by and my son and daughter and all of their toys push the strangers further into the icy inlet. Surprisingly, I feel unencumbered by this, unlike I once did. Before I found June’s tumor, this sort of thing, like being an inconvenience to others, really bothered me. I strived to be everyone’s greatest convenience. Oh, you need me to work extra shifts? No problem. Oh, you need me to stay late? No problem. I will set my chair in the prickly dune grass so you and yours can walk by me while my children play up here where I am pretty sure it’s illegal to sit or play because of the endangered piping plovers, but no problem. Enjoy the beach!
That was the old me. After your child becomes sick, you lose your identity, and what I only recently learned is that you lose all of it. It was nothing I considered when my identity first disappeared. I sat distraught staring out hospital windows at the miniature cars and people below, ruminating about where and when I’d find it again. Had I realized that you also lose the parts of yourself you’ve spent most of your life trying to get rid of perhaps I wouldn’t have been so concerned. For most of my adult life I’d diligently sat on a couch week after week talking to a therapist. I was thousands of dollars deep in therapy in my early twenties, a time I could barely make rent, let alone a single fifty-dollar monthly payment toward the interest on my student debt. Convinced I’d never change. I was destined to people pleasing and doomed to failure for the rest of my life. Big thoughts for a seemingly small person. Eventually, with hard work, I became someone I could tolerate. Then the atomic bomb of childhood cancer was dropped and there was nothing. Deafening silence. The body and mind were simultaneously freed of who I once was. For better or worse, my identity was inhaled by the billowing black mushroom cloud above. Poof.
Ten minutes after unfolding my beach chair, laying out towels, dumping a canvas bag of sand toys and all the sand we brought home last week, and stripping down to my bathing suit, a woman unfolded her beach chair three feet away from me. I noticed she was watching my son push a plastic yellow dump truck in the sand. With soft eyes and a gentle smile, she looked at me and said, “How old is he?” I was waiting for this.
“He turned one in May.” I was relieved to hear my voice calm, confident, and unwavering. Not the slightest hint of the brittle, tearful voice that sometimes leaks out.
“Ah, all three of my grandchildren are May babies as well. Two of them are twins.” She nodded in the direction of the three playing in the water just in front of us. “Enjoy it while it lasts. I thought when I was younger, this feels like forever, but really it goes so fast. Now I wish I had the constant little voices. The house is so quiet.”
I’m familiar with the quiet. I can also feel it in our house. I know what it’s like to have and to no longer have. I know exactly how it feels when it goes by so fast. I can see the quiet when I look at my two remarkable children, and there’s a silent uninhabited space between them. A space their sister would roll around in and fill with giggles if she were physically here. I think about forever, and smile wholly at the woman as I consider all of my children, here and gone. I feel my inner self floating into the memory of June’s deeply wise celestial blue eyes. I know exactly what this woman is talking about. For the first time in a long while I feel a connection with a stranger.
“It does go by fast.” I whole-heartedly agree. “I enjoy every moment.” For the first time in a while, I don’t feel insulted by a strangers comment. I don’t feel like I need to share June with this woman. In that moment, we share a deeper level of understanding. I imagine the sense of loss she felt when her children grew up and left the home she had carefully crafted around them for almost twenty years. I imagine so much of her happiness and fulfillment also left when they did. The phrase “Enjoy it while it lasts” is poignant. I see a reflection of this woman and her life in her words. As mothers, in our individual ways, we both know and truly understand that nothing lasts forever.
