When You’re a Parent, Time Speeds by Until It Stands Still

When illness hits home, the rest of the world can wait.

It’s been a really difficult week over here.

One of my sons was kicked out of his summer camp, as I’ve written more about here. In a bind with childcare, my husband took him to his grandparents. So I’ve been home alone with my 4-year-old son.

Usually going from two kids to one is like a parenting vacation. Instead, I’ve got a sink of dirty dishes and a new pack of 1000 oral mouth swabs on my doorstep.

It started with my son yelling out in pain while eating an orange. Then I discovered a sizable mouth sore on his tongue, and soon he stopped eating and drinking completely.

Since then we’ve been to his pediatrician’s office twice and the ER once, and we have a tentative diagnosis of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease. I’ve been forcing Tylenol and Ibuprofen on him every few hours and tracking his fluid intake.

I’ve held him while he screamed at night, and dodged his punches when the pain was so severe that he lashed out.

He will be okay, and life will go on.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from parenting, it’s the impermanence of things.

But until my son is okay, my entire world is contained in the space we share huddled close in my bed at night.

There have been so many times over the past decade when I’ve stopped to note how fast time seems to move as we age.

The visual that always comes back to me is from a documentary I saw years ago. An older man described aging as being on a train that’s slowly picking up speed and watching the train tracks pass under you. At first you can see each individual train track you pass, until the train starts moving so fast that the tracks become a solid line pointed straight at the horizon.

As a 39-year-old parent, this visual has stayed with me. My train has picked up speed significantly over the past few years, and it pains me to think about how much faster it might still go.

What I didn’t realize when I watched that documentary years ago, however, is that parents have a special superpower. When your child is suffering, your train can stop completely.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your busiest time at work or if you have dinner reservations with a dear friend who is only in town once a year.

In these moments, nothing matters to you more than your child’s wellbeing. You measure time in the space between Tylenol doses and sips of juice.

I ache for those parents who must live in this space to care for a seriously ill child.

I know that my immobility is temporary, but you are faced with the impossible task of carrying on while time stands still. I know that I am one of the lucky ones, as I’ll only be here a short while.

Read more of my stories about the highs and lows of parenting: