Father Time is a weekly column dedicated to the concept of time in a parent’s life, particularly a father’s life. The point of view comes from a father of two young sons, both under three-years-old, and how time really is just that: a concept.
Time is a precious currency between parents. It’s an almost tangible thing that is negotiated and traded intensely between Mom and Dad, the primary owners of the account. In the beginning, time is so rare a coin that it’s a struggle to even think you’ll get any additional minutes to yourself again when the most needy customer is helplessly small and adorable. You learn fast that you can’t save time (literally), and you can’t make more of it. You can only maximize it.
Negotiations quickly comes into play. Here’s a sample scenario:
Parent 1: “How would you feel if I went to the store? By myself.”
Parent 2: “Sure. Go ahead. You don’t need to ask permission.”
Parent 1: “Okay. Well, I’m going now. You’ll be okay here with the kids?”
Parent 2: “Fine. Wait, how long did you say you’ll be gone? And which store?”
And that’s just going to the store.
“You learn fast that you can’t save time (literally), and you can’t make more of it. You can only maximize it.”
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What about when you’d like to go for a jog, or she wants to do some laps at the pool, or you have a dinner meeting, or she needs a girls’ afternoon to get her nails done, and on and on. You and your partner will always be, for the foreseeable future, always asking, waiting, and juggling lengths of time, most often not longer than an hour. These pockets of “free time” as your single or married-without-children friends refer to them, do present themselves. For example, when the children nap at the same time. It does happen, though it’s only for about 45 minutes at a time. It’s a glorious time of day, but you can’t get down to yoga and back in less than an hour. Who can?
When I think of this shuffling of time in a new parent’s life, I remember how a doctor once explained it to me: “There are two distinct phases of time in parenting couple’s life,” she said. “B.C. and A.D.”
“What does that mean?” I had asked her, my only reference point being Before Christ, etc.
“Before Conception and After Diapers,” she said. “Everything in between is a vacuum of time.” Her explanation of this interim period didn’t make much sense to me when we spoke about it, me having just started the journey of fatherhood. But now, smack in the middle of one toddler just past the two-year mark, and an infant into his fifth month, I see it. There will never be a full break in the agenda, at least not until said underpants go on said butts.
Why? Because until then, the babies are still babies, and babies need our undivided attention. Sure, we attempt to buy time with babysitters and nanny’s, or rotate who gets to workout when or go to the store by themselves, but in the end, aren’t you just rushing through whatever it is you’re doing because you feel guilty for being alone, while your Number One is slaving away at home, wiping something crying?
I know I am. Even when I go off to work, or have an event on the weekend or in the evening, I’m thinking of them. I’m texting to check in, or logging into the monitor. I’m a nervous wreck, because that time I’m not spending with them is slipping away and I’ll never get it back. I’m giving my time to other things, and those other things aren’t going to pay for my nursing home when I’m 86. Actually, they might, but I’m hoping the kids will. Please.
“Right now is perhaps the most challenging time, but the best. It’s the only time they’ll never remember, and the time you’ll never forget.”
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It’s this time between B.C. and A.D.—this netherworld of round-the-clock care—that is the most precious. It’s the time when the babies will be babies and never again. Blink and they’ll be off to college. Right now is perhaps the most challenging time, but the best. It’s the only time they’ll never remember, and the time you’ll never forget. In those moments when I’m stressing about finishing up what I’m doing outside of the home (my job, working out, etc.), worrying about not being there, I tell myself, this phase won’t last forever. My wife and I will get to sleep eight straight hours again. We’ll get to go to movies and museums and farmer’s markets and concerts and football games and actually enjoy them. Some day. Yet, it won’t be under these circumstances. These chaotic, hectic, frantic, circumstances. It won’t last forever. That’s why we have to savor this time, now.
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Photo credit: Robert Couse-Baker.