Mindy

“The years she had her babies, years in which she was a young mother, nursing, singing lullabies, walking them up and down the uneven sidewalks, holding hands, lifting them high on her shoulders. The years of preschool, grade school, middle school, high school. All so long gone now. What is left of her? She rarely lets herself think this way. That young family across the street with their new baby is at the beginning of a life that they will think will last forever. Time will move so slowly. The creeping predawn hours during which the mother will sit nursing in her rocker. The fascination and boredom of early parenthood. The hours and hours sitting on little chairs outside of classrooms during school phase-ins. Wonder why it all seems to be taking so long. Then suddenly---it will feel as if it has happened overnight----there will be no need for bedtime stories, lullabies. No hand-holding. She will lose sight of what's happening. It will speed up, like the pages of a calendar in one of those old-fashioned movies, flipping, flipping, one day, week, month into the next until, if she's not careful, she will no longer recognize her child, her life.”
― Dani Shapiro, Signal Fires