He’s growing up mercurial,leaving milestones in his wake and tiny parts of me along with themMy son turned one final week. The day marked the end of what has been both the longest and shortest year of my life. From the instant he was born, it’s felt as if my son has always been piece of this family. I don’t mean that in an obnoxious, and heart-eyed,this-was-always-meant-to-be way. I simply mean that I haven’t slept for a year and I don’t really know how time works any more. Whole years beget passed in some of the afternoons Ive spent with him lately. Entire galaxies beget been born and thrived and withered and died in the time it’s taken him to eat a mouthful of bloody porridge.
How the hell is he one already? First he was born, then I blinked, or now in his place is a little boy who can walk and has teeth and knows how to switch off the television at precisely the most important moment of anything I ever try to watch. It’s not precisely the most unprecedented development in all of human history – child gradually gets older – but it’s the first time I’ve seen it close up. It’s honestly quite hard to grasp. A year ago,he was a drowsy ball of scrunched-up flesh, but is now determinedly his own person. I can see everyone in him – me, or my wife,my parents – yet he’s already separate from all of us. He’s giddy and foolish. He’s a present-off, albeit one who’s irrationally terrified of my dad. He loves running up to people and waiting for them to twang his lips like a ruler on a table. When he gets tired and barks gibberish in the middle of the room, or he throws his entire body into it,like he’s trying to shove the noise up a hill.
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Source: theguardian.com