Another month gone...

I can't believe it's July. Sometimes I think about what I was doing a year ago as opposed to now and the difference is so shocking to me that I can hardly believe a mere 365 days have passed. Last year I was working at Furman and gearing up to find out in 6 weeks what flavor of baby we would be having. I was so totally convinced it was a boy that I knew it was a girl. :-D But I was so anxious to have that time go by so I could find out if I needed to buy pink or blue, and I wished time would hurry up so that I could just KNOW one little clue about my sweet baby's identity.

This year I have a nearly six month old, perfect, beautiful, baby girl and I cannot figure out how to slow time down so that I can make sure I don't forget it, don't underappreciate it, don't miss out on something somewhere that I might want to remember one day for me or her.

This has left me a bit melancholy. It's noticeable enough that Ben constantly asks me if I'm ok. He can see on my face the concern, but until just now I haven't been able to adequately give my melancholy a reason. But it's the passage of time, the realization that it is slipping away faster than I'd care to admit, the realization that I am no longer just a child but now also a parent...it's hard to handle. And I don't know why, exactly. This is not a surprise. Not to sound cliche, but this is the circle of life, yes? So why am I so surprised at my age every time I tell it to someone? Why am I so shocked to see that my parents are older and not as able to do anymore? I feel like I went to sleep a teenager and woke up an adult and it's very unnerving to me, to say the least. It's making me very maudlin.

For example, as I was nursing and rocking Lilah to sleep tonight, I had this fear that one day I would not be able to remember my daddy's voice. And then I realized I really don't remember my grandfather's voice, and I wondered if my mom was having a hard time remembering it, too. I realize that she heard it for 30 years more than I did, but it seriously hurts my feelings when I realize that it's not there in my brain, and there's nowhere I can go to get it, to hear it, to have Lilah listen so I can say, "That is your great-grandfather. He had a very good sense of humor and was always telling us jokes. He smelled like Granger pipe tobacco and when he kissed us before shaving, we called it sticky sugar."

So I sat there, sad because she won't have that, and I realized that I can hear my daddy now in my head, but I'm not sure how long it will stay there. And I hear the sweet voice he uses when he talks to her, and I hear the voice he uses when he talks to other men and is trying to be perceived as "cool," and I hear the voice he uses with me, whom he still sees as his silly little girl and I don't know how to catch them all, so I can one day say to Lilah, "This is your grandfather. He worked very hard his whole life because he wanted us to have nice things. He would take me and your uncle out with us when your gramma was mad at him and we would go wherever he liked to go, not necessarily child-friendly places. Like the gun range. But most times we went to his baby sister's house and played on their computer. We had a lot of jokes about him, but we knew he loved us because he worked so hard."

I sat there, near tears, looking at this baby girl and I tried to memorize her face as it was just then because I realize I didn't remember what it was like to sit there and hold her the same way just 3 months ago, nevermind when she was fragile and tiny and new and literally half the size she is now.

I can't stop time, and I think that's what is making me so sad.