I
t is absolutely wild seeing your child go through the great, terrible, banal work of growing up. Virtually every child goes through these exact stages, of being able to raise their head, of smiling, laughing, rolling over, eventually crawling -- it's a cliché that parents obsess over acts in their child that no one else cares about.
Having been an adult for a while now, I've gotten very used to the way and speed that adults change. But babies are on a whole different time scale. My son John is developing new powers and personality traits on a weekly basis, while still being the same person that I love so intensely. John has been out in the world for less than half a year -- I can see my friends and family changing on those scales, but by relatively miniscule amounts. But John has undergone profound changes, breathtaking changes, that make you excited for the future and bewildered that the past is already gone. And this will just keep happening, slowing slightly, but not much, for a long while. I'm in my thirties -- a year doesn't mean a lot to me anymore, but the clay of my child will be molded at a rate that will amaze this old stone. When time starts to become cheap for ourselves, it never ceases to astonish us how much it will buy for our young.