The maddening, glorious times of our children’s lives

Are We There Yet? • LORI CLINCH

My friend’s child has just turned a year old.

As the birthday girl licked the frosting off a flower cookie that didn’t look so much like a flower, my friend observed that she didn’t know where the last year had gone and then wondered, “Will the time always go so fast?”

I had to mull that one over for a minute, for time is a funny thing and the answer is both yes and no.

There are moments when time flies and you do your best to slow it down, and then there are moments when your very own precious child has taken a handful of gravel and tossed it at all of the other toddlers on the playground. Suddenly you are met with angry stares from a mob of parents and passage of time seems to come to a screeching halt. Then there are moments such as Christmas morning when you rub the sleep out of your eyes as you admire the 2-foot silhouette in the doorway who is telling you with great excitement that it’s Christmas, it’s really Christmas and Santa came! And you notice that he’s wearing his new cowboy boots and his Batman jimmies, and you wonder how long he’ll continue to do that. It’s episodes like that when you want to pull time by the reins because you realize it’s galloping by and leaving you in the dust.

But then there are the days when you’re standing in a checkout line behind some woman who has a form of payment so obscure that they need five managers to verify it while one of your little dears spills a box of candy and the other knocks a bottle of juice to the floor and is crying at the top of his little lungs as other patrons look on — times like that, it certainly can’t go quickly enough.

Then there are the naive moments when you were gullible enough to think your offspring will behave during a dinner out with friends who just happen to have kids who are easily entertained by a coloring book and an encyclopedia, as one of your kids paints a Picasso on the table with ketchup and another scales the lattice behind the table as he sings out his own rendition of “Yodel Lady Who”!

Eras like that can’t go swiftly enough, and if you were traveling through the years in a time machine, you’d surely step on the gas.

Then there are the muddy trails, the diaper pails and the toy tractor that stubs your toe in the middle of the night. Not to mention that you can’t wear white because some little dear is bound to contaminate your britches as they use your left thigh for home base.

There’s the calling of riding shotgun and the times that two kids throw down over a box of Cheese Nips, and the fact that you have to hide in the back of your closet, on the floor and behind a pile of dirty clothes to make an important phone call and they can still find you, embarrass you and cause you to declare an emergency and promptly hang up on your accountant.

And if the ups and downs of puberty don’t leave you scouring the cupboards for a Prozac, then you are a better woman than I.

Oh, but there are the moments of bliss. There are times when kids scrape their knees or bump their heads and are convinced that a simple kiss from Mommy can make all of the hurt go away. There are times that they sit on your lap and rub your arm with their pudgy little hands as you read their favorite book and are mesmerized by all of life’s simplest treasures.

There are times when they wave at you from third base, or look to see if you saw them make the touchdown-saving tackle, or better yet, hit the buzzer-beating shot that won the game.

Best yet, when they wrap their arms around you and tell you they love you, that’s when you realize that it’s all been going by way too fast.

While it seems like just yesterday you ironed a baptism outfit, all too soon you’ll be ironing a white shirt for First Communion, and then out of the blue, you’ll be pressing a robe for graduation.

Suddenly you’ll notice that you are doing fewer things for the first time and more things for the last.

I told that mom that if I had a time machine, I’d slam on the brakes.

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book “Are We There Yet?” You can reach her at www.loriclinch. com.