By Lisa Manterfield
I do hope this isn’t simply a factor of aging, but lately I seem to have lost my ability to keep track of time. I was always so good at remembering things like how many years ago we visited such-and-such a place, or where we spent Christmas four years ago. But the last several years of my life have suddenly blurred into one big event. I can no longer accurately mark time.
Over lunch with a friend recently, we talked about her daughter and both expressed shock that she is already 16. How the years fly! We talked about another friend who has since moved away and how vividly we remember going to see her new baby so many years ago. I realized that I have no idea how old this little boy is now. I guessed he was probably somewhere around 10 or 12, but my friend knew exactly. “He’s two years younger than my daughter. He’ll be 14 in March.” I felt guilty that I didn’t remember that.
Walking home after lunch, it dawned on me that my time amnesia might have a lot to do with not having children. My friend is reminded on a daily basis of how old her children are. She marks the passing of time with birthday parties, school grades, and childhood milestones. She knows how long ago something happened, because she knows how old her kids were, or what grade they were in at the time. She knows how old our friend’s son is because she remembers where she was on her motherhood path when our friend was pregnant. I don’t have that marker and so I have to try to fill in the gaps with other events, or news headlines to mark time in my memory. But unless something significant happened, I don’t have those milestones to grasp onto.
Without children to mark time and propel my life forward, I can see how easy it could be to drift through the years. Children create milestones and new direction and, while I’m not in any danger of falling into a rut yet, I can see how easily my life could lose direction.
Maybe I’ve just hit by a patch of melancholy again, so does anyone else see this? Do any of you feel as if your life is drifting by?
I was just talking about this with my husband the other day, no joke. I definitely feel like time moves differently since we accepted that we will not have children. While we were still striving, I felt like that tall, lonely pine tree in a time-lapse photo with stars all circled around a single point — everyone else got to move on, and we were stuck, stationary, milestoneless. I feel you on this fear of drifting through life, and I feel that loss of the milestones my friends and family with children mark their days with. For me it’s a little different, because I’m a teacher and my years are marked in 10 week increments and I have a lot of the same points that people with children do throughout my calendar, but I don’t have those birthday parties, those tangible comparisons between friends’ kids and my own like you said. We sat down at the end of December and made a list of goals (for this year and a sort of bucket list) to try to make some kind of timeline for ourselves since we won’t have First Day of School or Off to College and our nest will remain forever empty, bringing all this to the forefront when people’s kids graduate high school and college and get married and have their own kids. I’m hoping that will help this sense of “what’s my purpose if I’m not going to be the next Julia Child or whatever?” I’m sorry you’re feeling the melancholy, I get it. It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around. Sending you love.
I feel this too. There was a time that I got surprised that my niece now aged 11 hates to wear dress, when she used to wear that a lot when she was like 6 or 7, and I thought she was still that age. I lost track of time, I thought my nieces and nephews were still little children when they are starting to become teens.
And those milestones, I agree with that. I work with mothers whose milestones were their children’s graduations, 7th or 18th birthdays. While me and my husband counts years by our wedding anniversaries in an interval of 5 years.
It’s just so sad that we get to witness our parent friends milestones in front seat and feeling this way.
I have been a reader of this blog for a while. As a childless-not-by-choice woman with a broken heart, the comments/words from others on this blog have been more comforting & encouraging than you will ever know. Thank you.
I agree in some ways, as I do feel sometimes that the years are passing by, but part of that is due to my professional frustrations, and I don’t put it down to not having children.
I disagree too, though. I mark the years by different things, not by children’s ages. (Often, by our various trips, or when the Olympics occurred, or major events in our town etc). I guess I have a good memory for dates, because my husband is terrible at this. But then, he’d be terrible if he had kids too.
I don’t have children that remind me of how old I am, so I can happily think of myself as years younger, listen to younger music, etc. I keep up with new technology so much better than my friends or family with children, because I know I have to learn about it, or I’ll never have access to it. Whereas they just ask their kids to help. So my thought for the day is, having kids can make you lazy!
Mali, I totally agree with this! When I am with my nieces and nephew I may be out of touch with music (but truthfully, I was when I was a teen too- in fact my husband jokes that he’s never met anyone with less knowledge of pop culture than I have. He’s probably right) But, technologically, I’m the one who SOLVES my nieces and nephews problems. And, I do feel younger than a lot of my friends who are parents, I think in part because of that. My husband and I are both early adopters of most things tech so it keeps us on that edge. But I also agree about having a mind for dates- I actually have a better idea of when things occurred than my sister the mother of these kids- she’ll ask me when she got divorced! LOL It drives my husband crazy that I can say oh no that was 2007 right after your mom died (and he has no idea that was when X happened or that was when his mom died). But I have always had a memory for dates. I still remember birthdays of people I haven’t spoken to in 25 years. So, for the part of dates and time passing? I think that’s more a factor of who you are- or at least for me. And he would be just as bad with dates if he had kids. He seriously jokes about how easy it is to remember our anniversary because of how close it is to 9/11. At least he’ll never forget it….
I agree with you, Lisa, that it’s getting harder to track time, & that the years seem to be flying by faster & faster. Like Mali, I do tend to have a pretty good memory (I’m the one people always ask because they know I will remember stuff…!), but I am finding it A couple of things help me remember stuff: (1) I’ve moved around a lot in my life, so I tend to remember things according to where I was living at the time. (When I live in one spot for a long time, the timelines tend to get blurrier.) (2) I keep a detailed datebook that includes people’s birthdays & anniversaries (& the ages/years), which I update from year to year. And (3) I take lots of photos AND I keep them pretty well organized in folders by date. (When I kept hard copies, I tried — and succeeded, to a point — to write names & dates on the backs… I’ve also kept birth announcements, wedding invitations, etc.) Being able to consult my photos & memorabilia has helped me settle a lot of family arguments about what happened when! 😉