Eight years old or so
I read somewhere recently how the way our kids need us as parents fundamentally changes around the time they turn eight years old. S turned seven a couple of weeks ago and this has been on my mind since I came across that bit.
I also think it’s true.
Every morning, almost like clockwork, S wakes up and rather than head downstairs or play quietly in his room, he climbs into our bed with one of his squishies and cuddles with us. Nine times out of ten it’s my side he chooses, but it does vary. I have a little cuddler.
I won’t always.
One day, he won’t tuck under our blankets and fall back asleep. He won’t need K or I in that way anymore, or certainly not as often. Maybe every once in a while.
While I want to rush ahead to that time in his childhood where he can be even more independent, where we can expect more of him and he can engage with us on a new level, I want everything to stay in these moments. Carrying him down the stairs to breakfast. Giving him a kiss to see him off in the morning as he walks, still slightly trepidatiously into school. Chase him in circles around and around the dining table.
These are the moments to cherish.
On a recent work trip, my filmmaker asked me driving back to Denver in the dark, “What’s your vision for retirement?” I didn’t have to think long to answer because I’ve spent years already thinking about it. “It’s now,” I told him. “And it’s later.”
I feel like we all know the age-old construct of retirement: work a lot of years, maybe really hard, to at some point down the road not have to work. Front-loading life, really.
I feel like the construct, though still relevant, is giving way to a new one. A way of life that approaches work and these moments for our kids, young and crawling into our beds for cuddles in the mornings, with balance. It’s a privileged approach, yes. As I explained to Justin, I feel it’s in fact harder than the retirement path. The structure that comes from having to work all those years is in some ways a blessing.
How easy it is, it was in the not-too-distant past, to get up in the morning, make our coffees, and walk out the door to catch the commuter train to work, K and I. To be in an office, in a studio, in meetings, in a space where we had to be. It was laid out for us.
Balance, on the other hand, is much more elusive and difficult to create.
We own our own balance, the time we spend working and the time we spend raising our kids. The reality, the part that makes it so much more difficult, is that the two of them, S and H, dictate a big part of that balance. They disrupt it with coming up to us and showing K or I their latest drawing, explaining in great detail how the Super Car is doing this or that. H wanting to sit down together and bounce balls in between our legs. Or put on her dinosaur costume, T-Rex head piece and all.
It’s why I want to race ahead. So K and I can be more in control of our balance, while also still being present for them.
At the same time, of course, I don’t want it to end. I don’t want them to grow older, or to get bigger, or to need us in a fundamentally different way. I want them to keep needing us the way they always have. As their protectors, as their playmates, as their providers. I want to keep carrying S down the stairs to breakfast, to keep kissing him goodbye at school drop-off, to keep chasing him around the dining table, laughing and falling down on the floor so the two of them can come crashing down on top of me, their small bodies shaking with giggles.
