-Ferris Bueller

As a child, I would count down the days to school breaks or to family vacations. As a student, I would count down days until an exam or the end of a semester. Once I started working, I would still count down minutes, hours, and days -  is it 5:00 yet? Is it happy hour yet? It’s only Monday? Ugh, I wish it was Friday. Time, it seemed, often consumed me and sometimes even paralyzed me.

I’m still consumed by time, but now I often wish the clock would just stop ticking. How I would love to recapture the feeling of too much time, but I fear it’s impossible. I’m much older and wiser now. I know better. My days fly by in the blink of an eye now. You can blame it on the busyness that adulthood and responsibility brings, but it’s much more simplistic than that. Simply put, life is too short. I just didn’t realize how short it was until I had a child.

My Monkey is about to turn two years old this week. I remember everything about my pregnancy, from the shocked moment I found out, to the incredible sensation of carrying life, to the very second he came into this world. It was a very silent moment. Tears streamed down my face, both from pain and exhaustion, but also from overwhelming joy and happiness. I then remember hearing the Dude say “it’s a boy!” and the nurse exclaim “he is beautiful!” but the Monkey didn’t utter anything at all. He was silent for a few minutes, but I was surprisingly not afraid by the quiet. I knew he just needed a few minutes to adjust to the world, take it all in, and then speak. He’s like his mother that way.

The moment he was born seemed like a moment that would never come. Pregnancy seemed to take forever plus a few days. But the moment he came into the world was also the moment I stopped counting down minutes, hours, days, and months. Now he’s about to turn two. One day he will be off to school and then off to college. Maybe he’ll get married and start his own family. When those things happen, I’ll be looking back at these days that I’m living now with what I’m sure will be a combination of fondness and wistfulness. I might have some regrets by then. I might have wished that I had done some things differently. It’s much too soon to tell what those things will be, but I can’t think about it too much now. I need to live my life for these moments and savor them all. Even the moments that I dread. The moments that make me want to pull my hair out and scream. No day is ever perfect, no matter how perfect it might seem in retrospect. So I need to just live and enjoy it all – all the perfections and imperfections of my days and, in general, my life with the Dude and the Monkey.

The Monkey made me slow me down and change lanes. It was one of the best gifts I have ever received. Slowing down made me truly appreciate that time, in itself, is a precious gift. A gift that will one day be taken away from us. Did I need a child to tell me that? Yes. I have learned more from a child that doesn’t even speak coherently than from any book or professor. Each day is a gift that none of us are guaranteed. Hug your kids. Tell your partner you love them. Laugh. Live. Enjoy it all. And, for God’s sake, please stop counting down the hours and days of your life. You might be wishing for all that time again one day.