Family Matters - by Jude Dobson

Flickering candles
Children's birthdays: they're such poignant milestones for mums and dads
Another birthday party is over, and now I have a 6-year-old. It's only been 78 days coming.
When the small person realised big sister had a function on her laptop that could tell how many days to go until a named event, every time it was opened she knew, to the day, how far away her birthday was. It became a bit of a standing joke, the ``how many days now?' question, in that big sister could always name the precise number, be it 64, 39, 17, or nine. Only when it got to a number that was within counting range was big sister's natty wee tool redundant.
As we lay in the small person's bed together that night we chattered about the fun events of the day: the great presents, the lovely friends, the chocolate cake. And then there was a wee silence followed by: ``But I miss being five and four and three and two and one. Will I ever be them again, Mum?' The happiness turned to a touch of grief, as I explained that we always get older, never younger.
We cannot go back, except in our memories. It's one of those parenting moments when you see the concrete realities of life dawning on your child, and with it the significance of what that actually means. Wanting to make a poignant moment positive, rather than negative (as I felt it could quickly have become for my weary partygoer), we talked about the happy memories she had of being five, of being four and being three. We marvelled at all the things she could do now she was six that she was too little to do back then. Even with the guided discussion there was no doubt there was sadness there - the brutal reality that life marches on regardless of where your head is. I don't think it's right to dismiss that and jolly things along. It just 'is'.
I felt it, too, once she started talking about it. I realised that every birthday the youngest child has is the door shutting on all those years for all my children. Her birthday will always signify the end of an era in my life for parenting that particular age group. I can see I'll have to be aware of that. It got to me last year as I said goodbye to the lovely kindy teacher for the last time. I had been in and out of her gate countless times in a 10-year period.
She saw me through so many changes, saw my two and 3-year-olds all grow into schoolchildren. I know when the last one leaves primary school it'll be the same sort of bereft feeling. OK, that was that then. Did I do it right? Where did that time seem to go? Do I remember it all? Did I take enough photos, and where the hell are they all, anyway? And on it will go with all those end of era milestones through the coming years, I suspect. I'll have to be careful I don't let it creep up on me and become some pathetic, incoherent mess on her 21st. I'm sure in 15 years I will have got better at the letting go. It'll be a busy, full 15 years till then, of that I am sure. Somewhere in that period I will actually sit down to find, sort and archive all their photos before I can't recall how old a child is in a certain picture.
I did, at least, sort old certificates, artwork, stories they wrote, schoolbooks, etc, into a semblance of order over summer, so the kids can flick through a set of clear files that show them a snapshot of what they were up to at certain ages. It's only taken me about three years! Previous to the clear file system there were boxes of stuff to sort. It's now the keeping up that matters. But, with a 2009 clear file in each room, I do have a place to put the paperwork until we have an end of year cull.
But the photos, well, that's a big project, and a growing headache I just have to attend to one day.
In the meantime, though, we have a 6-year-old in the house and it's only 364 days until her next birthday. Yes. She asked but, hopefully, she won't again until there's just 78 days to go.
04 06 2009