Becoming a father changed time for me.
Watching my mother rock and sing to my newborn, to her granddaughter, I remember being an infant, I am brought back to being in her arms. I can also see my daughter’s grandmother become young again herself, perhaps also entering into her memory of being in her own mother’s arms.
The future has also become much more real. My hundred-year-present was my lifetime and the lifetimes of my parents and grandparents, and it had begun to stretch forward with my nieces and nephews. This present has now united fully with the lifetime of my daughter, and I am now deeply connected to all that she will touch. My actions and dwelling in this present will cultivate the world she will live in.
My time alive feels briefer than ever, as I have become increasingly aware of how quickly we grow, and grow old. And yet I now feel myself weaving a new generation of life into being, part of the dance of generations and regeneration, and so my life energy is becoming continuous with coming generations. I can stay here in this present, in this place, and channel to my daughter all my many journeys and relations, all that my ancestors lived and passed to me; it is a feeling of vast, dynamic stillness.
My time alive feels briefer than ever, as I have become increasingly aware of how quickly we grow, and grow old. And yet I now feel myself weaving a new generation of life into being, part of the dance of generations and regeneration, and so my life energy is becoming continuous with coming generations. I can stay here in this present, in this place, and channel to my daughter all my many journeys and relations, all that my ancestors lived and passed to me; it is a feeling of vast, dynamic stillness.
In some ways as parents we have lost all the “free time” we had before we had a child. It’s difficult to find time for our basic necessities while caring constantly for the basic necessities the baby. The tiredness is intense… though not like the first newborn days—those first moments stretched into hours making days full of wonder and love and only minutes of sleep. Time held still. Now, though, it feels like we have gained so much time—as a family, we take walks, and sing, and spend most of our time in the simple actions of domestic life. We eat, sleep, poop, bathe, cry, laugh, play. Time expands.
In those middle-of-the-night wakings, when I hold my baby in her moment of need, I awaken out of normal time into interstitial time: normal time is suspended, and my child becomes the universe.
In those middle-of-the-night wakings, when I hold my baby in her moment of need, I awaken out of normal time into interstitial time: normal time is suspended, and my child becomes the universe.
