Let's do the (parental) time warp again

Each time I phone my mother, she observes wistfully that her 11 grandchildren are growing up “too fast”. To overcome my guilt at raising two of them on the opposite side of the world from her, I usually point out that her grandmaternal options are expanding with time, not contracting. Because the offspring of her offspring currently range in age from four to 26, she can decide whether she wants to read one of them a bedtime story or ask another one to fix her computer. She can decide whether to play with a toy train or be taken on a real helicopter ride. She can request a seat at a kindergarten Christmas recital, or a backstage pass at the biggest musical in town.

But daughterly defensiveness notwithstanding, I do have some idea of what she means. As Kleine Jongen sets out this morning for his last day of high school, I am unable to stop myself musing about the rapid passage of time. Parenting — and I assume grandparenting — is indeed an odd kind of time warp.

For example, most of us spend a couple of parental time warp milliseconds on our child-rearing journey/battle/flounder, call it what you will, deranged and hysterical from a lack of sleep. We beg time to pass as we force ourselves at 3am — yet again — to address the latest nocturnal snot, pooh, wee, vomit, or scary monster combination, while considering whether that weird bronchial wheezing is likely to right itself by dawn. Against all odds, those parental time warp milliseconds pass.

Before I could say “successfully toilet trained”,  I was depositing Kleine Jongen at daycare. He was stoic although I could tell he was also reluctant and uncertain. But he didn't cry. It was an early indication of his unwavering resolve and independence. My little steel-coated marshmallow.

I bumbled through some unconvincing maternal reassurances. “You’re going to have a lovely day here with all these other lovely children including that lovely girl over there staging an unruly sandpit coup — make friends with her, she's very cool — and this lovely boy who appears to have an entire infectious diseases ward coming out of his nose,” I cooed. “These lovely underpaid women are going to look after you while mummy gathers herself and engages in the world for a few fleeting seconds. I might even have lunch with a couple of equally-exhausted girlfriends, wearing something other than tracksuit pants, the contents of your breakfast bowl, and one of daddy’s t-shirts.”

I smiled and waved cheerily, feigning confidence as I walked to the gate, hoping he hadn't seen the flash of maternal uncertainty cross my face. Metres outside the gate, I had to resist the temptation to go back and prevent my precious steel-coated marshmallow from being slowly toasted in the flames of maternal abandonment. When I returned to collect him a few parental time warp milliseconds later he could tie his own shoelaces, write his own name and create remarkable works of art.

He called me a poo-poo-bum-bumhead and gave me his now familiar aloof and incredulous stare when I announced it was time to leave. I anticipate receiving the same treatment when he realises I've posted this blog. #iamapoopoobumbumhead

Back then, I was not too bothered by the aloof incredulous stare, because by this point in the parental time warp I was revelling in the blissful luxury of at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep most nights. I functioned relatively normally. Mostly. In general. Broadly speaking. Although not always.

There was that one day when I deposited Grote Jongen at school and stayed to chat idly to some other mums. Three-year-old Kleine Jongen played with another child nearby. After ten minutes I bade the other women a good day, walked out of the school grounds, got into my car and drove 50 very quiet metres before realising, with an involuntary scream and an F1-esque u-turn, that I had left Kleine Jongen alone in the school playground. Parking regulations were blatantly flaunted and world sprint records fell as I returned to the Scene of Unintentional Abandonment. I expected to find police tape and a judgemental international media. Instead, I found two supposedly supportive girlfriends, doubled over in hysterics, wallowing in smug comparative maternal excellence. Beside them, safe in their dubious care, sat Kleine Jongen, pretty much as I had left him; digging happily in the sand and oblivious to my negligence. In hindsight, I should probably not have bothered to go back and get him because three parental time warp milliseconds later, he was enrolled at that school himself.

The time warp intensified shortly after Kleine Jongen (officially) started attending primary school. 

Pure evil: Kleine Jongen (centre), 

shortly before his bog-gate acquittal

He was named as a member of an unruly gang of 5-year olds who committed the heinous crime of hurling wads of water-soaked toilet paper onto the ceiling of the boys’ toilets. And ok maybe the ceiling of the girls’ toilets too. This creative physics experiment (“bog-gate” to those of us who watched, bemused, as the disciplinary proceedings unfolded), was a crucial part of Kleine Jongen’s headlong descent into adulthood. He vehemently and convincingly protested his innocence to a formidable principal. This early success applying paediatric philosophical reasoning skills encouraged an intense study of human rights (his own) and provided an excellent grounding in playground diplomacy. It was a short step from there to the field of football diplomacy. Years of expert commentary on corruption and injustice in the Beautiful Game ensued. 

He developed an intimidating encyclopedic knowledge of international football statistics, and a (reasonably) healthy obsession with seeing Liverpool FC win the Premier League. 

The earliest known sighting of 

Kleine Jongen in a Liverpool shirt: 

his 6th birthday party

Such deep knowledge requires a lot of internet access. Ned Nederlander and I soon recognised Kleine Jongen’s superior technological firepower and we made a strategic withdrawal from the Virtuous Battle Against Excessive Screen Time. Ignoring reems of expert advice, we allowed ourselves to be driven meekly into technological submission. My retrospective justification for this is that the more time kids spend on devices, the greater the chance that you’ll produce a personal IT consultant. Go ahead; throw another device into the parental time warp. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, let’s see. One day, you will be extracting last night’s broccoli from the video player (“It wasn’t me!” they will protest) so they can watch no more than 20 minutes of amusing but educational content (grateful cheerio to The Wiggles). Approximately eight tortured parental timewarp milliseconds later the school will call to let you know that your gorgeous little sweetheart is on detention for sharing inappropriate content on their finsta account.

Still wrapped in red on his annual
pilgrimage to Anfield

You will need to look up “finsta” before you have any hope of sensibly responding to the Assistant Head of School and interpreting your child’s claims that he is a victim of gender-based bias and blatant double standards. Your child will emerge with a reputation as a responsive and accountable adolescent, who it turns out can correctly identify gender-based bias and blatant double standards. You, on the other hand, will have gained a reputation as a naive, disengaged and irresponsible parent. And you still won’t really get the point of a finsta account. True story; that happened to someone I know really, really well.

Moments after I shared Kleine Jongen’s glee at being able to walk across the room by himself, he was walking out the door to go to the airport. He called over his shoulder that he’d see me in a week. Something to do with a summer course, future university choices, self-catered accommodation, and a television recording studio. How did we get to this point?

He’s training me, just like his big brother did. Getting me ready for the time he goes away for two weeks, not one. Helping me cope with the idea that soon he might disappear for months at a time. He's preparing me for the currently unthinkable concept of him only making quarterly visits home. It’s my turn to be the steel-coated marshmallow. Except I think I’m actually a marshmallow-coated marshmallow. Damn this parental time warp. And double-damn that I have to endure it twice.

But wait, no. I think it might actually be okay. Kleine Jongen’s transformation from clinging toddler to confident and competent young adult gives me many reasons to enthuse about the parental time warp. His motivation, focus, determination, and resilience inspire me. I envy his level-headedness under pressure, his understated and often unnoticed courage, his witty pragmatism and his balanced, objective view on life. His ability to retain and recall information highlights my own declining mental abilities, as does the canny perceptiveness that allows him to evaluate situations and people with speed and accuracy. I would like to have half of his ability to make and keep friends, quietly gaining people’s confidence, calmly moving between worlds. The parental time warp has turned him into an amazing human.

As he steps into his last day as a school boy, I see his readiness to move on to the next time and space dimension. And I know that in a few short parental time warp milliseconds, this too will seem like a distant memory. Let's do this time warp again.