Time

The other night, I was putting our ten-month-old son to bed. He lazed in my lap as he drank his bottle, his eyelids becoming heavy. The room was dimly lit. He was in just his diaper, clean and warm from his bath, his hair damp and askew. When he finished his bottle, he perked up, as he always does. I put the bottle on the floor and stood up with him in my arms. He looked at the ceiling and fixated on the overhead light. It wasn’t on, but he stared anyway and reached his little arm out towards the bulb.

I watched him look up at the light, and suddenly time collapsed in on itself. I had this strange sense that I was looking at myself as a baby. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen pictures of myself as a baby and happen to think that Rowan and I look somewhat similar – the same cheeks, the same eyes and eyebrows, similar noses. 

It was like a dream. I was looking at him but also at myself, as if there were two of us sharing one body. I saw our little chin and open mouth, revealing newly sprouted teeth. I saw our chubby cheeks. I saw our arm with the wrist roll, ending in five small fingers. I felt warm air coming from our nostrils. It was an extreme sense of something that I feel often, which is confusion between my body and Rowan’s. When he’s in distress and needing food or sleep, I feel distressed. When he’s napping with a clean diaper and full belly, I feel a deep sense of coziness. 

In early adulthood, the focus of my life was individuating: figuring out who I was, what kind of career I wanted, who I wanted to date, and where I wanted to live. Time marched forward with each new job and apartment. Everything felt quite linear. I was investigating differences between myself and people around me, including my parents, sister, and partner. I was interested in finding the boundaries between me and them, and what that meant for how I should live my life. It felt like the more time went on, the stronger my sense of self would probably get. I was always thinking about the next phase and whether I would feel more certain of myself then. 

Then I had a baby, and time completely changed. Days feel long and months feel short. The routine of feedings, naps, and diaper changes make time feel like a loop. It’s something I expected, given what everyone tells you about time and parenthood. 

But I didn’t know that this sense of time would also completely alter my sense of self. When Rowan was looking at the lightbulb, I felt that I was Rowan, Rowan was me, I was my parents, and we were all basically the same person. My sense of self has become liquid and hard to grasp, whereas before it was like clay that I was trying to shape into something nice.  

Instead of always looking a little ahead and building towards the next phase, I now find myself always looking a little bit backwards. I think about what my parents must have felt when they were raising babies. I think about Rowan as a tiny infant constantly. It’s as if I’m trying to make sense of my own transformation into becoming a mother. Did it happen when we brought him home from the hospital and I sat in the car next to him? Did it happen over the many, many hours I spent sitting on our couch, feeding him, all alone in the house? Did it happen the first time I saw my own mother holding Rowan in the hospital? Was she also holding me at that moment, in the hospital in New Jersey where I was born, with my three-year-old sister standing by her side?

The scariest thing about motherhood so far is those moments when I realize that this is it, that this is the last time I’ll ever be with Rowan as a baby. It feels like an impossible task, to try to show him how much I love him in just the mere minutes and hours we’re given. There’s no alchemizing time into clay or brick instead of the rushing water that it is. I cling to the sides of the river sometimes and hope that I can slow it down, but I know I can’t. I just try to let go and remember that when Rowan is older and realizes he is everyone who has come before him, he’ll know he’s never alone.