It sort of sneaks up on you, doesn’t it? For years, you literally fell asleep next to this person. They fell asleep on you. You were the last thing they saw, the last person they talked to, the one they begged for one more story, one more kiss, to do the blankets right one more time. And then suddenly, they’re like “Goodnight, Dad.” “Goodnight mom, close the door on the way out, will you?”

Like that, it’s over.

“Between you and me,” the National sing on one of their songs. “I thought it would last a little while longer / But I’m learning to lie here in the quiet light.” That’s what parenting is like. Even in the phases that are hard, even in the ones we think might break us, we can be surprised at how quickly they just end. How quickly they leave us adjusting to some new normal, one tinged with its own kind of sadness–because we miss how things used to be.

This is why we can’t rush through anything, hard stuff included. We have to soak it in. Because it won’t last forever. It will be in the past tense, soon enough. What comes in its place will be great too but there will also be grief. We’ll wish we had a little more time. We’ll wish we could go back and do it differently, appreciate it while we had it. But we won’t be able to. We can only do that now.