There are times when my mind flashes forward and sends back an image of what the future might look like. It happened last night when I was having dinner with my two boys. Asher was sitting on my lap and Everest was at his spot at the head of the table. There was something in Everest’s hand gestures that triggered the future-mind response, and I suddenly saw him sitting at this same dining room table, 24 years old, tall, confident, an easy smile on his face. Maybe it’s what I hope for him; maybe it’s a fragment from a dream that’s spliced into daytime consciousness. Whatever it is, it leaves me feeling both happy and sad: happy to see a glimpse of an imagined future and sad that time just keeps moving forward and the little, adorable, innocent six year old that sits before me will one day be all grown up.
As I fell asleep last night I pondered the image and what it elicited inside me. I thought about my life’s work of teaching others (and myself, of course – we teach what we need to learn) about letting go. I thought about all of the letting go that will happen between now and then: when he has his first crush and the tendrils that bind him exclusively to me begin to loosen. When he gets his driver’s license and drives off in a car alone (God help me!). When he graduates from high school and leaves home for college (perhaps we’ll be so blessed that he attends a local college…?). When he travels the world. When he falls truly in love and asks for her hand in marriage. Oh my.
And then I wondered: if I can see the 24 year old in the 6 year old, will I also be able to see the 6 year old in the 24 year old? When he walks into his childhood house for Thanksgiving and other holidays, will my mind flash backward and catch a glimpse of the little six year old who sat at this table one night in October 2010? Will I hear his feet scampering wildly around the house? Will I flash on him and Asher wrestling in the living room, both so small? When he stands at the altar waiting for his beloved to walk down the aisle, will I see the little boy within the grown man while I sit in the front row, crying tears of joy and sorrow? I hope so.
***
July 2025
In response to Janelle’s comment below, I’m sharing an update on this post nearly 15 years later. Janelle asked:
While reading this very old post of yours, I became quite curious and wanted to ask, did it come to pass? Do you see the younger versions of your sons? Or has time blurred it all into something amorphous? I’m asking as a mother of an 18 month old who has seen my son as an older version of himself and engages in anticipatory mourning for the potential loss of remembering what it was like when he was young.
To which I responded:
Janelle: Your comment inspired me to go back and read this post, which I had completely forgotten about. I’m happy to report that yes! Both my husband and I frequently see the younger versions of our sons in their 21 and 16 year old selves. And the confident, smiling older version that I saw in my 6-year old is also present. In some way that defies rational understanding, the past, present, and future all seem to be existing simultaneously. Thank you for returning me to the past!
Oh, how I miss the 6-year old. I really do. I miss the sweetness and the physical closeness. I miss holding my kids on my lap and being able to comfort them with a hug. My husband and I have been a bit blindsided by this stage of parenting young adult children. There are scores of books on how to parent your toddler and teenager, but much less on parenting grown kids. We’re still their parents, but the parenting is completely different. And we can’t soothe most of their challenges. As they say, “Small kids, small problems. Big kids, big problems.” A fallen ice cream cone is no longer fixed by a hug and play.
But if I had the choice to go back and do it all again, I would turn it down. Raising kids is hard, and as much as I loved having young children, I’m loving having older kids even more. As highly sensitive people, we often mourn the passage of time; it’s built into our temperamental wiring to grieve what is no longer. But as I age, I’m increasingly more grateful that time doesn’t stand still because to bear witness to the emergence of our children into the adults they’re meant to be is, to me, why we have kids.
To see Everest fly a plane…
To witness Asher spend two weeks in New York City at a screenwriting camp and come home a fuller version of himself…
To watch Everest find his tribe of friends and navigate the dating process as he clarifies what he’s looking for in a partner…
To read Asher’s short stories and films…
To watch the two of them drive off together to explore the mountains…
To have long, fascinating discussions about a variety of topics, from politics to films to morality to relationships…
To turn to my kids for their opinions as much (if not more) than they turn to me…
… this is also what emerges through the passage of time.
Every moment of parenting is a polarity of grief and gratitude: grief that the moment will pass and gratitude that the moment is here. As we and our children get older, these polarities deepen until, somehow, they integrate into a third where, as I wrote in the comment to Janelle, the past, present, and future collide into one beautiful whole. The grief around the passage of time becomes gratitude for the presence of time as we learn, over and over again, how to step more fully into this one moment… the only moment there is.
I am sitting at a coffee shop down the street from your house bawling my eyes out right now (I do believe that I now have a reputation at the Winot as the crazy pregnant lady).
This is so beautifully put, and I think that something that everyone has similar feelings on. We nurture our children, we love them, we want them to be happy and succeed, but watching them grow so fast is so tough. I look at my sons with the same wonderings, what life will be as we move forward in life. I too hope that I can see the children they are in the men that they become.
Thank you for this. You brought tears to my eyes. It’s my earnest hope that yes, we will still see those little boys in our grown sons and that we will somehow surf in and out, back and forth, and in between times throughout our whole lives. (I have an Asher, too.)
i think my boys will always be little in my eyes. i still see my 4 yr old as the little tiny baby that he was. and when people say how big he is getting i honestly wonder what they are talking about. my older boys weren’t part of my life until they were 11 and 12 and that is how i still see them even though they are now 16 and 17. and my youngest is 7 months, i wonder if i will think of him at this age when he is a big like his brothers. getting a great big lump in my throat now…
Wow. May we cherish these days! Thank you for this reminder of how fleeting their childhood is. Some days it is difficult raising these energetic little beings… but we will miss wiping the runny noses and cleaning the spilled spaghetti (entire plate last night!!). As I watch my daughter play with my 5 month old and I tell her to “be gentle” for the 5th time… while hoping my 4yr old doesn’t break his arm jumping off the couch after I told him not to… I am fondly thinking of your words.
Wow… thank you for that!! I share similar glimpses… like when I listen to my baby’s music player, playing Cannon in D… and I see his Bride walking down the aisle, at their wedding… amazing!
Thank you, everyone, for your comments. It is quite universal, I suppose, this confluence of joy and pain in witnessing our kids grow up. It does help me to stay in the moment and appreciate it all – even the challenges – when I really feel into those flashes of the future. And how many times has someone whose kids have grown said to you, “Appreciate these years, honey, because they pass before you know it.”
Thankyou for this website-
I find myself in the middle of many transitions:
Weaning my 2 year old daughter from breastfeeding-How
conflicted I feel to lose this special ritual we share and
yet needing to get a full night sleep…
Starting my own business…Never have done this before..
Involved hiring a nanny…difficult to let my daughter be cared for by someone else..
Working on my marriage so that their is more happiness and friendship….
Yes yes yes. So many transitions all at once activating so much grief…
I can tell you as the Mother of 3 grown children who have ventured out into the world…that little boy never goes away. At all those BIG life changes i look at my oldest son and then hug the 6 year old….The pure joy of their spirit nevers goes!
That’s great to hear!
This is a lovely meditation, thank you.
While reading this very old post of yours, I became quite curious and wanted to ask, did it come to pass? Do you see the younger versions of your sons? Or has time blurred it all into something amorphous? I’m asking as a mother of an 18 month old who has seen my son as an older version of himself and engages in anticipatory mourning for the potential loss of remembering what it was like when he was young.
Janelle: Your comment inspired me to go back and read this post, which I had completely forgotten about. I’m happy to report that yes! Both my husband and I frequently see the younger versions of our sons in their 21 and 16 year old selves. And the confident, smiling older version that I saw in my 6-year old is also present. In some way that defies rational understanding, the past, present, and future all seem to be existing simultaneously. Thank you for returning me to the past!
Thank you for the wonderful reply!
I have been slowly going through all of your posts tagged with “transitions”, beginning with the oldest.
I have found many to be helpful for where I am at this life stage and for who I am generally.
(Recently I shed a few tears at Mocha’s decline and death as I have a 14 year old cat with some health issues.)
Thanks for all the time and energy you put into this blog, your courses, and the podcast! I appreciate you sharing your wisdom and vulnerability with us all.
Recently I have been thinking a lot past and present. I will be 50 this year, yikes! I often painfully miss the 1990’s, which was (at least for me) a “golden era”, to be brutally honest, I miss my body that I had in my 20’s, thin, slender, fit. I was a brave and skilled horse rider. I studied chemistry at the university, it was my passion and I was very good at it. I was so hopeful, passionate with naive faith, that I will find “the one”, the love of my life. Tears come into my eyes when I type this. I am 49 years old woman, have become invisible to men, single, little bit overweight, I can just and just walk on a slow tempo with a trusted horse, I have forgotten pretty much all about chemistry. I miss my old self, who felt the “real me”!! The energy, bravery, passion towards life, and certain lightness in my body and mind. I hate to compare the old and current me, because this current always feels “less than”, inferior, somekind of second-rate compared to my former self or other young women. I am not depressed, I hardly ever am, this is just my honest “assessment” how I feel now and the past couple of years and I have no idea what would help. I can’t travel back in time 🙁
We can’t travel back in time but we can retrieve some of our younger parts and bring them with us as we age. This, I believe, is one of our primary tasks in midlife: to assess what we want to bring with us and what we want to leave behind. Our Gathering Gold episode called “Aging Backwards” might help.
As I am starting to wean my 18 month old daughter, and crying and grieving so much, this really hit home. Thank you.
I’m so glad it hit home. Sending big hugs.