When Did That Happen?

The babies. That is how I refer to the grandchildren. They are three small babies. Well, maybe not as much as I pretend.

My sons are “the kids” even though they are old and bigger than me. They remain kids in my heart and I’m shocked each time I hear them referred to as “men” even though they are older than their father was when we married. I thought of myself and my husband as adults at the age of twenty. My sons are older, but they are still the kids.

The babies are not really all babies. One is a baby, just months old. She is smiling on purpose. She catches sight of her own hand and tracks the wondrous object as it moves willy-nilly. She eats out of a bottle and only out of a bottle, although when I put a bit of chocolate fluff on her lips, she did like that.

Her next older sibling is sort of still a baby. He is still counted in months, but we are getting close to being done with that. Like adults who are twenty-something, he is a baby twenty-something only in months. He is closing in on the second birthday. He walks and is beginning to talk with his favorite word being “no.” He will say no while doing yes. He is showing us who he is, but one of the things he is is the younger brother. And he follows the older brother with a touch of adoration as many younger brothers do.

The oldest grandchild is definitely not a baby any longer. He is three. Well, he is three-and-a-half plus a couple months. We can still count with halves at this age, but the whole month thing is really over the top. He walks and talks. He imagines and can converse. He is making the world, or at least his part of it, safe from any and all blue dinosaurs who would dare to intrude. He has mastered many social skills, like bathroom etiquette. His hair is no longer that baby-fine silk but the hair of people rather than babies.

I see the babies about three to four times a month. I’m not overly astounded by the change from week to week. But because they are so close in age, the differences are haunting. How do they grow up so fast? It doesn’t seem fast at the time. I remember it seeming like I would never be done with diapers and then I was teaching someone to drive.

Perhaps it is a function of getting older. It has been over half a lifetime since the last Thanksgiving for one grandson and about thirty percent of a lifetime for the other. The granddaughter has never seen a Thanksgiving, and like her brother before, wouldn’t remember it if she had. For me, it’s been not so long ago since I cooked the turkey.

Each day for me as an old coot is a mere rush of activity that goes by in a blur, especially when counted against the nearly 20,000 other days of my life. A day is about 1/100 of my granddaughter’s life, while it’s about 1/600 of the middle child’s and 1/1250 of the big boy’s life. The twenty-four hours of each day that we are given are a far larger piece for the babies. Even the kids have a lifespan of about half mine, but they are still in the five digits.

I understand the theory that states that perspective makes the time seem to fly faster as we age. I know that there are moments, however, that still blur past at warp speed. Then there are days that drag along like a lame turtle stuck in molasses. It’s not the present time which I believe is the same regardless of age, but looking back at the past that makes time dilate or contract.

When I look back and see the big brother as the infant I first met, it seems so near. But in the space of the three years, two more people have come into my life. The babies. The kids. The youngsters who are the legacy I always dreamed of. My family.