There Is A Last Time To All Of It

There’s a meme that features the characters from the movie The Sandlot that says “At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and nobody knew it.” It’s not a quote that’s actually in the movie, but a line parents should understand just as well as their kids.

It may be hard to imagine right now, when they are small and vulnerable, but there will be a last time for every moment you share in their childhood. There’s the stuff we love doing with our kids. Hide and seek. Going to concerts together. Watching them hit a home run. And there is the stuff you love less–the diapers, the arguments over curfew, the screaming tantrums. The good and the bad, the mundane and the wonderful alike, none of it lasts forever.

There’s the last time they wet their bed and you have to wash the sheets. There’s a last time you have to remind them for the last time to do their homework or put their shoes away. There’s a last time they run into your arms, there is a last time they try to sneak out of the house.

The fact that there is a ticking clock to all of this should inform everything we do—though each situation is different. It should mean we sweat little things less…and also soak up the little things more. It means that we should enjoy those few chances we’ll ever get to be woken up by them in the middle of the night. To be their chauffeur. To be their homework sidekick. To be up waiting for them to come home. To be the one they call.

The days are long but the years are short, as they say. At some point, before you know it, you and your kids are going to have your last day together. Before then, try to make the most of every mundane and wonderful moment you get you with them.

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