Nicola Harrison laments the passing of her sons' childhood...
"Time, for any mother, is an oceanic thing. It is never tick-tock constant, but swells and shrinks between the minutes and the hours of motherhood, until days turn into weeks and weeks to years. And as the years pass, the shadows lengthen on the wall, and our babies grow tall.
I remember when my two sons were babies, how very slowly time passed, drip鈥rip鈥ike oil through muslin. As I nursed them, I waited for each lonely minute to fall. And all the while I was wishing time away...to the next feed, the next sleep, anything that wasn't this moment, this terrible eternal present. That's what young mothers do. Trapped in amber, they wish the slow moments away. They say, "It'll be easier when he or she can walk, or start nursery, or go to school."
As the children get older, life gets easier. But there is a price. Because every minute the kids are growing up, time is gaining momentum, too, and before you know it, Old Father Time is streets ahead of you, disappearing round the next corner, as grey as dusk, and there is no hope, ever, of catching him up.
I'll tell you another funny thing about mother time. It doesn't just run away with you, it works on different levels, too. So you can look at yourself in the mirror and see hardly any difference from one year to the next. A few more lines around the eyes and mouth perhaps, but no shocks - no sharp reminders of the passage of time. "I'm just the same as ever," you think. And you do look pretty much the same, especially if you haven't got your glasses on.
But then you turn to look at your children. Good God! "Who are these changelings?" you wonder, "These tall, beautiful strangers that have crept in and replaced my babies when I wasn't watching?" And that's when you realise what Time has done.
Some days I come home from work and my sons have got friends in. As I step through the front door I trip over something that looks like a woodpile in the hall. Upon closer examination, I discover that it is not a mound of logs, but an accumulation of huge school shoes. And I wonder, "Who are all these men in my house with their big feet and their booming voices?"
And I realise they're the same little boys who've been coming to my house for years. That it's me who's lagging behind, me who, somewhat fantastically, still believes that her teenage sons are only four and six.
"Where have all the years gone?" you wail. And your voice sounds high and thin, even to you, and there is a faint note of desperation in it. "How about a game of ludo?" you call after their disappearing backs. "Oh, Mum," they laugh. "You hate board games. You never played ludo with us when we were small". "Well I will, now," you say, worrying over their use of the word, 'small'. " I'll even play Monopoly!"
And you would, too, however much you loathe it. Because you'll do absolutely anything to hold back the swelling tide of time. Oh, how it rushes by these days, as though you've gone through some kind of temporal wormhole and been spat out the other end.
For suddenly those slow-time-dripping babies are sturdy, lovely young adults, standing on the edge of the nest and saying - "Look, Mum, we're ready to jump."
So enjoy the moments. Don't wish them away. For in the twinkling of an eye, your babies will be grown and gone forever, and you can never call them back to the nest...or ever change one single thing you did."
