Words by Andrea Goto
Photography and Art Direction by Chia Chong
Styling and Art Direction by Libbie Summers
Floral Design by Ashley Bailey
Artwork by katherine sandoz
Yesterday, as I stepped outside and I was overcome with the thick, sweet smell of Confederate jasmine hanging over our backyard like a heavy fog. The entire fence was covered in thousands of small, star-like white blooms. I immediately began to worry that by the end of next week, they’ll be gone. I suppose the temporal quality of flowers is inherent to their beauty. If the jasmine blooms endured like their hearty green leaves, I might never stop to smell the flowers. That kind of permanence would be unnatural and numbing—we’d take it for granted
Not too long ago, I reached into my daughter’s crib to lift her and groaned under the strain of bringing her 12 pounds up to me. Months later, I transported her cradled in one arm, and then later still, on one hip. Today I lift her with both my arms as if I’m rescuing her. I have to turn sideways to pass through her door so as not to bang her head or feet on the casing. My back aches and my knees buckle under her now 55 pounds as I attempt to lay her gently in my bed—like I have every morning since the day she was born. Now she topples awkwardly from my arms into a pile of laughter.
Somewhere along the line, my baby—my first and only—became a kid. I can’t tell you exactly when this happened.
I guess it must’ve been between rushing to tennis, work, birthday parties, school—always rushing. I watched closely for it, as if it were something I could fix into my memory like her first word or first step. Somehow I missed it. One moment my daughter was trying to gum a Zwieback cookie, and the next she’s negotiating for a pair of over-priced Sketchers that embody every bad 80s trend you can think of: neon, lace, crosses—the whole “She Bop.”
“You’re a little monster,” I tease her as she promises to love me forever—and more than Daddy—if I just buy these shoes that will sit in her closet with the other wasted investments because they “feel weird.”
“I’m not a monster!” she suddenly yells angrily at my trivial teasing.
I laugh at the irony of her response, which only makes things worse.
“It’s not funny!” she roars.
Oh. So we’re at that stage now.
I couldn’t wait until my daughter slept through the night. Six months later when she finally did (yeah, you read that right), I couldn’t wait for her to wake up. I looked forward to her transition from the bottle to solids, diapers to underwear, The Wiggles to Looney Tunes. I’m told that one day she will master the skill of wiping herself, though I’m not convinced.
But as time slingshots past me at lightning speed, I see these milestones less like signs of progress and more like potential hazards. I used to rush toward adulthood in desperation, but now that I’ve arrived, the sands of time feel as if they’re stuck in the liner of my bikini, chafing my most tender places. One minute my 7-year-old declares she loves those bright, bedazzled Sketchers, the next she refuses to have her feet bound by the oppressive institution of footwear.
I want to record every stage of my daughter’s life before running to keep up with the next one. But there are far too many, from the big changes to the seemingly uneventful. Like when she wakes in the morning with homeless hair and rise-and-shine breath. Like when she suddenly becomes deeply sensitive to my teasing. I can’t keep up. And as much as I’m proud of her growth and achievements, I can’t help but be burdened by the fact that every time she blooms, I fall a little further away.
It’s natural. It’s how it’s always been. Hard as I may try these days, time isn’t ever going to forget me. I might as well stop to smell the flowers, reveling in how my daughter blooms, because it’s the transient nature of life that fuels the magnitude of these moments.
Meet Andrea!
Andrea Goto teaches writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work in journalism, humor writing and memoir, reflects her fascination by the strange, messy beauty of real life and the people she encounters along the way. She is the associate editor at Savannah Magazine and a regular contributor to ModernMom.com. You can also follow Andrea and her parenting (mis)adventures on her blog, Mom Without Makeup. She currently lives in Savannah, Georgia, with a sack-lunch obsessed daughter, a husband who subsists entirely on processed food and a cat in the early stages of kidney failure.
Follow Andrea on Twitter.
