As one of a long list of summer projects, I've been going through all of our digital pictures since 2010, sorting out the best ones to print for old-fashioned photo albums. I try to make it through five folders a day, and afterwards, mixed with the satisfaction that I'm actually making progress, I've been feeling a little sad. There's little Clayton, looking so much like Dee Dee, laughing in the baby swing, or sitting in his high chair with mashed carrots all over his face. And there he is again, holding one of his newborn sisters. And there's little Sylvia in the baby bath tub, and Dee Dee when she first learned to crawl... In the scope of a lifetime, we are not so far from those times, and yet I never leave the computer without feeling pummeled by how fleeting they are.
Oh, this is hardly a revelation. Every parent of young children knows it viscerally, the changes that seem to happen overnight, the others that creep up on you without you really noticing. One day Sylvia won't sing "Why! Why! Why!" in her carseat anymore; one day I might not even remember that she once did. It is enough to break your heart a dozen times a day.
Dee Dee says, "Teee!" when she wants more of something. She used to sign for "more" with her hands, and we would always say, "More, please!" So, "more" for her became "teee!" and, of course, Sylvia, who imitates her sister at every opportunity, now says it too. Clayton used to say "Mmmm" for water, who knows why, until one day he didn't anymore. Now he says things like "Absolutely!" and "Mama, I was wondering if you would mind if I took quiet time?"
It is the irony of these times. While our hearts are constantly wrung out by all that we cannot hold onto-- if they would only nod like that, forever, their whole little bodies bobbing up and down emphatically!-- we are counting the months until things are easier. The other day I had made a perfect salad: greens fresh from the garden, just-picked raspberries I'd managed to hide from the kids' begging mouths and reaching fingers, crumbled feta, and almonds roasted a golden brown. It was a simple thing, but how I was looking forward to it! I set the table, put the salads and dressing out, helped the girls into their seats, went to fetch whatever unmemorable entree we were having for dinner that night. Within seconds I heard the crash: Dee Dee had dumped my salad off the table, the precious little jewels scattered across the deck. Howard, our new little dog, had lost no time in devouring the feta, and all those perfect almonds that for once I had managed not to burn. I shoved him out of the way and fell to my knees, trying to salvage what I could, pathetically close to tears.
In our house, there's no point crying over spilt salad, or spilt cheerios, or dog water spilt so many times the bottom of the kitchen island has turned black with water damage. The dogs help out with a lot of the clean-up; they have to earn their keep, we say. But even that has its downside, since Sylvia will feed Soca yogurt with her spoon, alternating his bites with her own, and Howard has such poor manners he will eat the girls' food right off their trays if given half a chance.
It's hurricane season, now, and Don jokes that Debbie should have been called Dee Dee. She is a storm of destruction, breaking the wind chimes that hang off the deck, dumping out boxes of screws for the chicken coop, chewing up tampons, systematically dropping the cats' food by fistfuls out of the cat door. A fearless climber, nothing is reliably out of her reach. In seconds, she is on the toy chest, grabbing at picture frames on the windowsill or a cell phone left on the railing. She knows what she is doing, for when she sees us coming, she'll make a break for it, then, just when she senses she's about to be caught, will throw the stolen item to the floor with all her might. The only hope is to call on the better side of her nature, to give her a task that she'll feed proud of accomplishing. "Dee Dee! Can you put that mug in the dishwasher?" (instead of throwing it on the kitchen tile.) "Dee Dee! Can you be a big girl and give Mama her phone, please?" (instead of dousing it in the toilet.)
Sometimes it seems impossible that the chaos could be as fleeting as the cuteness. It seems to have dug in its heels to stay. The other day I was showering with Clayton, getting ready to meet a friend for a drink. Don was getting the girls ready for bed, Dee Dee on the changing table, Sylvia in the bath. I hopped out of the shower and heard Sylvia sounding distressed. "Uh-oh!" she kept saying. "Uh-oh!" I looked in on her-- she was pressed up against the end of the tub, pointing at an enormous poop floating and disintegrating in the bath water. "Uh-oh! Uh-oh!" Her legs were streaked with it, the shower curtain soiled. I'm scooping poop out of the tub in the buff, the dogs careening around the house as they play, claws skidding on the wood floor, Sylvia singing her refrain-- "Uh-oh! Uh-oh!"-- and Dee Dee looking on. "Big poop!" she says, pointing. "Big poop!" Clayton emerges from the shower, dripping water all over the floor.
"Uh-oh!" Sylvia tells him.
"Uh-oh is right!" he says. "I need to get dwied off!"
I wonder, will we remember this? Years from now, collecting eggs, will we look at the chicken coop and marvel? How did we manage to build this-- together, no less-- with three small children to take care of? Will I remember how I put all three of them in there with me, the girls playing with screws and Clayton making up some elaborate game of pretend-- "Mom, pretend I'm a chicken, but when you get to the zoo and look into the cage, I've turned into a chicken man!"-- while I hurried to attach the last of the chicken wire?
At two, I seem to remember, things were easier, the mindless destruction mostly over. "Only five more months," Don and I console each other, "until they have some sense." But no sooner do the words leave my mouth than I regret them. Everyday, overwhelmed by some endearing cuteness, I wish I could keep them this age forever. How dare I rush these times?
When Sylvia woke the other day from a typically short nap, we cursed when we heard her cries. We were working on the coop, and wanted to finish that day. I was sweaty and impatient, in the middle of putting hinges on a door, but I sat with her in the rocker, letting her doze off again against my chest. Momentarily I regretted not grabbing a New Yorker. If I was going to be doing nothing, I could at least catch up on some reading. But then I called to mind a similar moment with Clayton. It was winter, and I held him against me as he drifted back to sleep, rocking and rocking while the thud of Don chopping wood echoed in from outside. The memory has always seemed to me a bulwark against the erasure of time, a precious sliver saved as the moment became buried in the years, the Clayton of then so thoroughly consumed by the Clayton of today. I adjusted Sylvia against my shoulder and stroked the tears and damp tendrils of hair from her face. I sat with her a long time, even when she seemed so asleep I wondered if I could put her down and finish the coop door... Instead, I tried my best to etch the moment into memory, her pudgy limbs limp against me, her sweet mouth fallen open as she breathed against my skin. It may not have been the last time she will slept against me, but it could be-- time does not relent. I held onto her as long as I could.
