It’s not just that it’s going fast, though it is. Tempus fugit, time flies, that’s true. But one of the things it’s easy to miss is that, right now, things are comparatively easy.
Sure, it’s a lot. Your kid wakes up with a cough. You’ve got a long commute to school and then the office. They never sleep. There’s drama in the mom or dad group. It’s a lot. It’s also nothing! Nothing compared to what life could (and very likely will) visit upon you.
We quoted that passage from Sophie Elmhirst’s amazing book, A Marriage at Sea (get a copy from The Painted Porch here) a while back. It’s worth quoting again:
A theatrical departure in front of a well-wishing crowd followed by a long voyage on which you might be shipwrecked … It’s not bad, as metaphors go, for the relationship between a wedding and a marriage. And then what? After the wedding, after the honeymoon—well, then it’s just those days. Ordinary days. The insurmountable, self-renewing chores. The bins, the laundry, the procession of meals. And those are the golden days, it turns out. The blissful, boring days that you long for when things go wrong…
Not to spoil the book, but what goes wrong for the main characters is that they do become shipwrecked. So today, in the middle of your pedestrian, self-renewing parenting life—pickups and dropoffs, laundry and dishes, practices and games—remember that you might just be in the golden days. And that the future very well could bring you something that makes you beg for a return to the comfortable routine of these monotonous “blissful, boring days.”
P.S. In a way, you can return to these golden days later on—if you write about them. With one simple practice, you can create a daily record of family life and your journey as a parent, a lifelong treasury of memories.
The Daily Dad Five Year Reflection Journal helps you build that practice and that record. One line. One prompt. Every day. Your answers will write the story of this incredible and irreplaceable time in your life. This beautiful leatherbound journal also makes a meaningful Father’s Day gift.
Get your Daily Dad Five Year Reflection Journal.
