Holding you as a newborn, I picked up those 6,700 days and looked at them like a telescope turned the wrong way, with your leaving a tiny dot that seemed a million years away. Now I turn the telescope around, and see our time in minutes, magnified up close.
I look at the calendar and have to blink a few times. “Move out day” is one of the tidy entries on the calendar 10 days from now, sandwiched between “vet appointment” and “payday.” There it is in regular black type.
How can it look so ordinary? It should be a foot tall, maybe in bold, red letters. A heavy slash between one day and the next. One day you will be here, and the next you will be gone. It's just the reverse of the day you were born. Within 24 hours, our lives change forever. Boom.
So. What do you say we rethink this moving thing, put it off a year? There’s no way I have taught you everything you should know before you leave home. I need more time to teach you how to sew on a button. Cook something besides burritos and frozen dinners. Budget your money. Read a bus schedule. Flirt. Check your oil.
Believe me, there’s so much you don’t know yet. I can make a list that goes on for pages. In fact, I'm thinking another year may not even cover it.
But no... That’s not how this works. I had my chances. It was just hard to remember on each of those 6,700 days that those chances were happening in every second. I know, some part of me realized that someday you'd leave and that every day that passed subtracted one off our time together. But still, I always thought there was plenty of time left to do all those things I meant to do.
So I guess you’ll have to figure out everything I didn’t teach you. Luckily the internet can show you how to do a lot of them! And don’t forget you can call your mom too!
What’s next for you? Your path is uniquely your own, so I can’t say for sure. But I am guessing that there will be times coming soon when your heart is so filled with joy that you’ll want to sing a jaunty Broadway song at the top of your lungs. Times when you are so stressed out that you’ll feel like your brain can't contain one more thing as you finish studying at 2 am. Times when you are sick and sad and wishing more than anything your mom could be there to stroke your head while you throw up. Times when your heart is breaking because someone you loved fell in love with someone else. Times when you desperately wish you could talk to somebody, but your parents don’t make that list anymore.
All of those and more incredible, hard, wonderful, stretching things are coming. You can almost see them from what feels like a million years away if you squint through that time telescope the wrong way. But turn it around and you can see what matters: today. A hint of tomorrow. Each day is a wonderful bundle of opportunity and learning and even joy, just waiting to be unwrapped.
There are 10 days until you move. So today, we go grocery shopping and compare prices of generic and brand name canned beans. We bought you a Crockpot, so I’ll teach you how to make Swiss steak. Then let’s check your tire pressure. Or iron a shirt. Or even sit on the couch and watch PBS "Nova" together. We’ll keep spending our precious days, as always, one moment at a time.
I feel the weight of these measured minutes with you. As you come into my home office while I’m working, I’ll stop and look you in the eye every time. When you want to vent about work or school, I’ll listen for as long as you want. Or let's dance ridiculously in the kitchen, belting out "The Greatest Showman." In 11+ days I'll be so glad we made the most of this time.
Each of us gets 24 hours every day. How many days does anyone have left? 6,700 days. 10 days. Maybe 30,000 days. Who knows when a chapter will end—when those thick lines will come that separate a life into Before and After? If I taught you nothing else, I hope you’ll try to remember to cherish each precious, fleeting day. Don’t look back with regret. Every moment is a gift.
Turn around, my darling, and walk toward the sun.
P.S. This. ==>
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