What a Difference a Year Makes

It was just last summer I was staying up until two in the morning making Zee formula and documenting every diaper change. Not sure when we cut his naps to two. And now he’s turned one. 

Everything everyone ever told about raising an infant is right: the days are long. But these are dog years, at least the one we had was. I didn’t miss traveling, and certainly don’t want to go back to flying again — sorry San Francisco. There’s no meaning in putting up a photo in a cafe and tally up the list of countries I’ve been to — even though that was what I was doing before 2020. 

Raising another human being doesn’t add layers to life, but it gives you a reason to live your life to the fullness. You’re exhausted but you will go on. You work with your love one on every little step and marvel at how great a mother can be to her son. Such onward motion carried me through my father’s sudden death earlier this year. I wept, by myself and in front of Zee. Life goes on, and I will be there for him. He doesn’t need to do anything to impress me, he is loved, now and forever. 

In that sense a year is just days blowing by, it can’t be summed up by a photo album documenting his growth or mere words. The meaning, if any at all, is just the time you spend with the person you love. It’s gently holding your child when he wakes up in a panic. It’s tossing him in the air on a bright summer day. It’s taking him to the playground and tell the other kids who come near him it is okay to touch him. He is your friend. 

Watching Zee grow is a metric to my time on this planet, of how fast it goes and how fragile we are. Zee has become time itself, growing into existence with sheer strength and endless curiosity. It’s the feeling whenever Clair de Lunes ends and you’re hopeless for a second.  But it’s gone. It just is. You have to savor it when it’s there. 

Zee came to this world when a storm was raging through Manhattan. He cried at the great stage of fools. And now he is one, crawling and fighting his way around the backyard to feel the texture of the branches. Soon enough he’ll be telling Jung and I what he’s found in his wild days of travel in a restaurant of a city far away. 

Here’s to another day, another minute, another second…