By Jim Hagarty
There is a special pain reserved for the hearts of the parents of young children.
It has nothing to do with the stress of bringing them up safe, sane and sound but rather, with the certain knowledge that the children we see before us today, will have vanished forever by next month, or even next week.
Children change so rapidly that it seems that overnight, the boy who screamed from the back seat for his father to stop at every fire station on their route so he could be taken in to meet the chief and see the fire trucks, now can ride by the biggest firehalls without even a glance out the car window.
To see your child walk dismissively past toys that only last month captivated him for entire days or to have him protest, “I don’t want to play that game, Daddy!” when you try to resurrect an old routine, can leave a lump in your throat the size of ten of those toys. Because what it means is that you are losing him; he is one step closer to walking out your door for good. And to contemplate never again having that person you would literally die for around all the time is to peer into a future too lonesome to imagine.
The child, of course, has only one mission: to develop, to grow, to expand his horizons. It is a crime to hold him back. But as the length of those times during which he is content to sit in your lap and snuggle in front of a good cartoon on TV begins to shorten and now everything is baseball bats, bicycles and best friends, a Dad can be forgiven for wanting a few more uninterrupted hours curled up in the armchair with his son.
Any amateur psychologist will tell you that what the father is really mourning here is not so much the passing away of his boy’s childhood days but the ebbing away of his own life. It is himself he is crying for, not his son. And while I’m sure that’s right, I’ll bet that same psychologist never sat in the dark with his boy at bedtime playing, “I love you higher than the moon, much” and had that little boy fall asleep with that tiny cheek against his face.
Because if he had, he would know what he had lost when that boy, instead, climbs up by himself under his comforter covered with hockey team crests and says, “Will you scratch my back, Dad?”
Fortunately, each new stage of a child’s life is as interesting as the one he just left which is supposed to be compensation for your loss. But I will always remember those hugs that were tighter than the tightest wrestler’s hold and that little voice whispering in my ear, “I love you higher than the sky, much.”
No feeling I have experienced before or since, matches that one.
Unconditional love is a hard thing to put out of your mind.
I have never been able to do that.
