The days are long, but the years are short
When the twins started kindergarten, they couldn’t read or write much and didn’t know math beyond what they could count on their fingertips. The elementary school was so much bigger than the confines of their preschool. I didn’t know if they would be able to find their way to their classroom or to aftercare. They were so small! My babies — wouldn’t they get lost?
Ten months later, they’re finding their way. I’m stunned at how much they’ve learned: Now they read aloud to me at bedtime. Now Gege schools me on the intricacies of musk ox in the High Arctic, and how orcas are the top predators. Now Didi quizzes me on multiplication, which he prefers over addition because “you get big numbers if you multiply.” Now they get dressed by themselves, even if sometimes their pants go on backward.
Although I volunteered a few times in the classroom this year, I wished I’d gone in more often. “This is my mom,” Gege proudly told his friends. He climbed into my lap at circle time when I last visited, but a couple weeks later, when I was walking them to class, he slipped his hand from my grasp and ran off.
A friend with a second-grade daughter told me they’d agreed they’d hug goodbye a block from school and not in front of her friends. Soon enough, our twins won’t want hugs in public at all. With the days slip, slip, slipping away, I want to hold on tight to my sons but remind myself not to get mired in regret and to enjoy what time I have with them.
For many of us, 10 months can go by in a flash, when we’re caught up in work and family and other responsibilities. As adults, we typically emerge from 10 months looking much the same as we started it — same height, same weight — whereas the twins’ growth chart hanging in their bedroom marks their rapid transformation.
Yet the past few months have been anything but forgettable, because of the president and the roller coaster ride the country has taken during the campaign, the election and all that followed. Every day feels like a week. Like we’ve aged a hundred years, trying to keep up with the bad news: the workplace shooting in Orlando, the abandonment of the Paris climate change agreement, the knife attack by a white supremacist on the Portland light rail, the suicide bomber at the London concert followed by the knife and van attack, the gunmen and suicide bombers in Tehran, all in the name of the Islamic State.
It’s been said that children make you aware of the passage of time, in the clothes they quickly outgrow and in the rhythms of their year — back to school, winter break, spring concerts and a different sport every season. For me, having children has also added urgency to my days. I want to ensure their future and to speak up — to act — before it’s too late. But how? How do you keep on going, amid the daily onslaught, and keep up the fight? It’s a question that’s come up in conversation with friends and, last week, at Litquake’s “Such a Nasty Woman: Female Writers Respond to Trump” panel I moderated with authors Jewelle Gomez, Cristina García and Kate Schatz.
“Adopt one or two institutions you care desperately about and support them, whether it’s a print newspaper, the public library or the ACLU,” García said. “Big upheavals often happen from something rather unassuming that gained momentum. In our own ways, we can resist. That will get us through these times, day by day.” Gomez suggested reading the preamble to the Constitution and picking an area you might work on in your community. Schatz said that her research on heroic women throughout history, across continents and cultures, gave her strength and perspective by seeing how they prevailed.
When the twins struggle at something new, my husband and I remind them of how far they’ve come. If they persevere, they can progress, an important lesson for grown-ups to remember, too.
Last autumn, they laced up soccer cleats for the first time, and for much of the season they preferred to play goalie — no running — or to wander around the field. This spring, with his competitive streak, Didi has scored a few goals and Gege is getting into it, too.
People are always telling me with kids, the days are long but the years are short. So too it seems with the resistance. Change is possible, the change we make is happening all the time, even if we can’t see it in the moment, even if we only understand in retrospect, after we’ve arrived on the other side.
For me, having children has also added urgency to my days. I want to ensure their future and to speak up — to act — before it’s too late.