There were those other parents-to-be you met in the birthing classes. There were those other moms and dads in the baby groups. There was the pre-K or daycare teacher you saw every day for years. There were those parents you nodded to at Starbucks each morning before school. There were the families on the soccer team. There were your kid’s friends and their families who you invited to your child’s birthday parties.

And where are all those people now? Who knows? They were such a big part of your life and then one day, that chapter closed and you didn’t see them again. They moved or you moved or your kids moved on.  It’s like in the novel Fight Club, he jokes about the people he meets on airplanes as a business traveler as his ‘single-serving friends.’ Parenting is a little like that—there are people who phase in and then out of your life.

What we notice less, though, is that the same thing is happening with our own children and ourselves. You’re not only not seeing those six-year-olds from your daughter’s soccer team anymore…your own six-year-old daughter is gone too. The younger version of you who met those people at a breathing class or a swim class for infants—they no longer exist either. The people coming in and out of our lives are also the signposts reminding us that we ourselves are coming in and out of being, that our children are aging out right before our eyes.

This routine, this life, the person that seems so stable is barely even here. It will all be gone in an instant. We’ll never do this, never be here, never see them again. So shake the sleep from your eyes, shrug off the frustration or the fear and just be present. Enjoy it. Soak it in. Appreciate it. Let them know that you appreciate it. It doesn’t last…and when it’s gone, you’ll barely remember it.