I used to get so annoyed at all the people who kept telling me how time would fly or how they couldn't believe how big their babies were now. It bothered me when the 9456th person told me "your life is going to change," while I was pregnant. But I get it now. I really do. They weren't trying to be snotty or condescending. They were just trying to convey some profound truths about parenting that escape words.
Time passes and your baby becomes a little person, and in time, she will become a big person. Yet, you can't ever really detach yourself from the person she was at every stage - when we first learned she was coming, when she was a tiny newborn, and every stage she has gone through. To me, she will always be all of these people. She won't remember what she was like at age two, but I will and I'll treasure these memories.
I'll recall how she would climb up into my lap and beg me to read her a story one more time. I'll remember how I marveled at the fact that she started to recognize word and beg to go to the library for books. I'll remember the cheeky grin as she ran to me when she knew she'd done something wrong and that little mischievous twinkle in her eye.
So, maybe, at some point, I'll become one of those people who tells an expectant parent that their life is going to change, because I'll want to tell them but fail, too, to articulate how profoundly the experience of being a parent changes you, your life, all the people around you. How I'm not the same person I was before I became a mother, and how it has made me see the whole world just a little differently.
