The Forty Files

We all do it.

We look back on seasons of life with nostalgia. We remember the little things that, at the time, probably didn’t feel all that little. The tiny sneakers lined up by the door. The bedtime stories we rushed through because there were lunches to pack and dishes in the sink. The way a small hand instinctively reached for ours in a parking lot. The years when we were somebody’s entire world, or at least the person who knew where the other shoe was.

It’s the beauty of memory, the gift of having lived a life worth looking back on. These moments become our lighthouses, reminding us where we’ve been and who we’ve loved.

Sometimes, a photograph stops us in our tracks. A gap-toothed grin. A favorite dress. A child who once fit entirely in the crook of our arm. For a moment, we can almost feel the weight of them again.

Of course we miss those moments. How could we not?

But somewhere in parenthood, nostalgia can become something else. We start mourning seasons while we’re still living them. Our children walk a little farther ahead of us, close a bedroom door, develop their own opinions, and need us differently. Even as we’re proud of them, there’s that little voice whispering, Remember when?

I have friends with teenagers who still talk about their children as babies. I understand the impulse. Those years are stitched into us: the mispronounced words, the bedtime rituals, the weight of a sleeping child against our chest. There is comfort in revisiting the versions of our children we know so well, the ones whose stories we’ve told a hundred times.

But I notice how easily the conversation returns to who these children used to be. I hear stories about their first steps and favorite stuffed animals, and I wonder how often those same parents marvel at who their teenagers are becoming. How often do they share the conversation that surprised them, the unexpected kindness, the glimpse of a person they’re still getting to know?

Perhaps the past is easier to talk about because we already know how those chapters end. The present is still unfolding.

And I wonder what we might miss if we’re always reaching for the stories we already know by heart.

Before anyone comes for me, I get it. I really do.

I have two daughters, and I know the strange ache of realizing that the little girl whose hair I once brushed is now brushing it herself, with opinions about products I didn’t know existed. Parenting tweens can feel like standing in a doorway between two worlds, one foot planted in the familiar, the other trying to keep up with someone already halfway down the hall.

Sometimes I look at my girls and marvel at the people standing in front of me. Their friendships, worries, humor, and wonderfully strong opinions are all theirs. I know these are the years when they’re becoming themselves, even as part of me struggles to understand how we got here so quickly.

Here’s what I’ve been wondering: When we say we’re sad that our children are growing up, what exactly are we sad about losing?

Is it their childhood, or the version of ourselves who occupied it?

Is it the bedtime snuggles, or the certainty that we were the person who could make everything better? The tiny shoes, or the years when so much of their world still ran through ours?

Maybe what we’re grieving isn’t childhood itself, but a particular kind of closeness.

When our children are little, intimacy is built into everyday life. We buckle them in, wipe their faces, hold their hands, and check for monsters beneath their beds. Our love is expressed in a thousand small acts of care. We know their schedules, their favorite snacks, and which stuffed animal must accompany us everywhere.

Then, gradually, they begin to separate. They want privacy. They have experiences we weren’t there to witness and lives that are no longer entirely organized around ours.

That’s the job. We know that’s the job.

But knowing something intellectually doesn’t mean our hearts catch up at the same pace.

I think the trouble begins when every new milestone comes with a little eulogy for the last one. We cheer our children on as they become more independent, then tell them how much we miss when they were little. We celebrate their growth while mourning it aloud.

We mean to tell them how deeply they’ve been loved. But I wonder whether, sometimes, they also hear that the person they’re becoming can never quite compete with the person they used to be.

I don’t think most parents intend to send that message. We’re trying to make sense of time, of how someone who once needed help with practically everything can suddenly have a life and a mind of their own.

Still, our children shouldn’t have to carry our nostalgia. They deserve to grow into themselves without feeling responsible for making us feel better about the passage of time.

And we deserve to meet them there.

The baby years weren’t the whole story. Neither were the preschool years or the elementary school years. Each season brought us here, to the people our children are becoming and the relationships we’re still learning how to have with them.

There is so much to look forward to. Conversations that go beyond reminding them to put their shoes on for the seventeenth time. Jokes we haven’t heard, traditions we haven’t invented, and the privilege of knowing our children as they become people we might never have imagined.

What a gift it is to discover that there’s more to love.

So when I find myself missing the little years, I want to ask what I’m really longing for. If I miss the cuddles, I can find new ways to connect. If I miss feeling needed, I can learn to appreciate being trusted. And if I simply miss a moment that has passed, I can let myself miss it. I can look at the photograph, tell the story, feel the ache, and then put the phone down.

My daughters are still here.

They are not the babies in the photographs, and they aren’t supposed to be. They’re the people those babies were always becoming.

I want to remember my daughters’ childhoods. I want to tell the stories, keep the photographs, and occasionally cry over the fact that the little girls who once needed help with practically everything are now getting big enough to borrow my jewelry.

But I want to honor the little girls they were without making the bigger girls they are feel like an unfortunate trade.

I want to say, Those were beautiful years, and also, Look at you now.

Because memory is a lighthouse. It reminds us of the shore we’ve traveled from, but it’s not where we’re meant to live.

Maybe that’s the quiet work of parenting nobody quite prepares us for: learning to love our children through every version of themselves, including the ones we’re not ready to let go of and the ones we haven’t met yet.

We can carry the past with tenderness without asking it to come back. We can miss the little years without treating the years ahead as something to endure.

One day, we’ll look back on this season, too. We’ll remember the eye rolls, the laughter, the changing friendships, and the ordinary evenings we didn’t realize we’d miss.

The present is becoming someone’s memory, even as we live it.

I hope we can say we were here for it.