It Seems Like Milestones Aren’t What They Used to Be

Photo by Thomas Galler on Unsplash

Sometimes we get so caught up in the daily minutiae of existing that it’s easy for the big milestones to sneak up on us.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, my 7-year-old discovered his race car bed has real, functional headlights. This may not seem like a huge revelation, but here’s a little context. He’s slept in that bed for more than four years and not once during those more than 1400 days did we ever consider the possibility that the lights might, you know, light up.

That was one of the biggest things to happen around this place in quite some time. Frankly, we’re all still coming down from the high and we’re fluttering back to earth just in time for another big milestone. My oldest child is turning ten.

The big one oh. An entire decade of life for him and a decade of parenting for me.

It feels impossible that ten whole years have passed. It also feels impossible that it’s only been ten years. Almost everything that happened to me pre-children (P.C.?) seems like it happened to someone else. Driving home from Calculus II class in the dark through middle-of-nowhere central Florida listening to the Hot 9 at 9, a nightly countdown on the local Top-40 FM station, waiting impatiently for “Genie in a Bottle?” That had to be a different person or at least a different lifetime.

The little guy who changed our lives ten years ago isn’t exactly wrapping up his first decade the way he would want. It’s been a difficult last two years for most everyone, but he’s had to endure more than a full year of virtual school, some nagging medical issues that have made his return to in-person school less than optimal, and most recently, a broken arm he suffered just last week.

After receiving his first COVID vaccine on Saturday evening (yay!), he attended his first real birthday party since before the pandemic began. It was at a roller-skating rink, and he lasted a little more than one hour before an unfortunate backward fall onto his outstretched right arm ended his return to the party circuit.

The kid just can’t catch a break and then he literally does. Go figure.

Through it all, I continue to be amazed at how big his heart is, how funny he is, how kind he is, and how he can find silver linings even when the big gray thunderheads never seem to go away.

Ten years of goofiness and unconditional love. It almost doesn’t seem real. I guess we should immortalize this milestone somehow. We’ll just have to work around the really long arm cast, lingering global pandemic, and well, everything else.

In the before times, we used to throw big birthday parties at our house that everyone seemed to love, but now? It feels like we’re not ready for that psychologically or practically. Even living in the land where Covid has never existed as far as most people are concerned (Florida), mustering the energy and decisiveness to make plans remains a challenge.

So, what are we doing? I’m still not entirely sure even though his birthday is literally right now as I’m writing this. So far, all I have is that I’m going to go pick up a bagel from his favorite bagel place and drop it off at school so he can have a special lunch. This might not sound like much, but it is a pretty selfless act for me. Not only do I have to drive to get the bagel, but more alarmingly, I have to take it into the school office and interact with the lady at the front desk. She’s very nice, but that doesn’t eliminate the awkwardness. Like, do I mention the birthday? Just pretend this is a very normal thing parents do? Maybe it is a very normal thing? Should I have been doing this more? Is she annoyed with me for bringing this bagel/not bringing bagels more often?

Anyway, I guess I have a bagel to pick up before this all gets out of hand even more. Here’s to celebrating milestones in new, understated, and possibly cringe-worthy ways. I’ll see you on the other side.

Andrew is a writer of essays and humor and an editor of Frazzled, a parenting humor publication on Medium. You can subscribe to his email list for updates and follow him on Twitter for terrible tweets and more bagel content, probably.