By Jim Hagarty
2016
Someone wrote a beautiful little story I saw on Facebook one day. I didn’t save it and I am sure I would have a hard time finding it again.
So from memory, I will try to recreate the sentiment of it, accompanied by my own thoughts on it.
A big part of the delight of raising children are the many “first times” involved in the adventure. The first time you hold your child in your arms, their first bath, their first bedtime story, their first steps, the first time they call you Daddy. Their first day at school, the first time they ride a bike with no training wheels. The first night they stay over at a friend’s place.
Almost all of these first times are more or less predictable. We don’t know on what day they will happen, but we anticipate all these significant stages of development and they happen more or less on cue.
But what we cannot know is the timing of the many “last times” that are also inevitable. The last time we hold them in our arms, the last horsey ride, the last bedtime story, the last time they come running to meet us at the front door when we come home from work and jump up to be caught before we’ve set all our gear down.
For a while, it seems like there are more last times than first but that isn’t exactly true. There are always more firsts. The first boyfriend, the first extended time away from home, the first time behind the wheel of a car.
Maybe it is just as well that a parent doesn’t know that when he held his daughter’s hand on the way to school that day, that that would be the last time he would do that. Or when he laced up his son’s skates in the dressing room that day, he would never lace them up again. The next week, a sign on the door said, “Players and coaches only.” No more Dads.
I think if we knew that this time holding one end of the skipping rope would be the last or this song at bedtime to encourage sleep would be the very last song you would sing, you might go a little crazy. It is just as well we don’t know.
We have two big maple trees in our front yard. For a few years, they were filled with kids. My daughter would take a book up into the branches with her and sit there by the hour reading. Many times, I didn’t know the trees were populated until I walked by them and heard someone call my name from on high.
A couple of summers ago, I sat on my front porch and gazed up at the trees. It was August, fall around the corner. And it struck me. Not one boy or girl had scaled the lofty branches of the trees that year at all. My sadness was overwhelming.
But whatever Greater Power gives us our children, is kind. Each stage in their lives is gradually replaced by a new stage and the new ones are just as good in a hundred ways as the old ones.
Nevertheless, nothing can compare to tobogganing down a snow-covered hill with your child for the first time. Or taking them for their first ride on a train.
At least it seems that way. Parents who have gone through this already tell me the best is yet to come.
I believe them.
