letter #48: The motherhood time vortex
When we become a parent, time starts slipping through our fingers.
Listen to this essay (on a walk!)
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I’m starting to feel the sense that time is speeding up. What I feared most about becoming a mother was that time would be visual; it would slip through me without my awareness. Watching a child grow puts human growth—the loss of hand dimples—to an hour, a minute. Now that she’s almost two, and we’re shuffling her to daycare every day, humming through emails and meetings, rushing to the next minute, I can feel time vanishing.
I call it: the motherhood time vortex.
To be honest, I feel a lot like the bunny from Alice in Wonderland.
The time vortex, a metaphor for the all-encompassing nature of time in motherhood, is a temporality, a spatial awareness. With motherhood, we become intrinsic to time. We see it physically passing. Existential theorists and therapists have noted that a new sense of temporality is essential to becoming a mother. Time speeding forward is a promise.
That universal warning all parents offer when you have little kids, "the time," they say. "It goes so fast." And even as I'm sick of hearing it, their advice is a bit of a plea. It's a bit of a "safe yourself" warning, a white flag. It's a recognition of the inevitable, a deep understanding. "Try to find ways to wade in it, savor their youth. Yours."
Lucy Jones writes about time often in her book, Matrescence.
“Becoming a mother had also forced me to face an inconvenient truth: that my time on earth was limited, and my time with my baby, and then with my children, had an end point.”
Recently, in my family group chat, we discussed how strange and distorted time feels when you become a mother, especially when comparing your timeline to that of your parents.
The other day, in bed, doing the math, I realized my parents were my current age when September 11 happened. I couldn’t believe that to be possible, how old they felt in my mind then. They had a house and were raising a family, and now I am doing the same. I felt as if I was living inside my parent’s life, and I couldn’t quite decipher that in a given time (which would surely frighten me) I would be 60, looking at Lila raising a family, asking myself, “What happened?”
The truth is that the intimacy we share with our children has a shelf life. Whenever I watch Lila play, this is in the back of my mind, plaguing me a bit. Watch her, memorize her smell, and take her hand. She’s growing before your own eyes. It’s not always going to be this way, and she’s not always going to be this small. This reality is beautiful, complex, right, and the most accurate truth.
And how ungodly heartbreaking. The mere idea that having children and engaging in the most profound love offered in human existence promises two paradoxical things: joy and heartbreak. Coincidentally, as well, we won’t always be here with them.
I wonder what cell phones do to our brains and time. When I steal a moment behind the kitchen counter to check my text messages or Instagram while she plays with her blocks, it’s a moment to step away from mundane play. I adore playing with Lila. But still, it gets boring. I pull away for something imperative and cognitive, like a TikTok recipe. It isn’t charming — but I do it. In those fleeting moments, is looking at my phone in between playtime with Lila stunting time? Is it making time morph and feel even quicker if I’m blocking out those dull moments of toddler play? Will I remember little fragments of my time with her if I patch them up with random memes and videos?
Even more, is how I’m tracking our time together — making the moments feel so documented — not letting my memories carry anything unique? In the first ten months of Lila’s life, I saved over 1,000 photos of her on my phone. I look at my Timehop app daily, which serves me fragments from her early days. Is my memory what I acutely remember? Am I saving the small details I want to remember? Or will my memory only file what I choose to document digitally? What do I remember without all of those photos and 25-second videos? If I can’t define that, am I genuinely taking the time to absorb her life? I think about this a lot. It makes me want to buy a disposable camera and throw my phone out the window. When I post a video of her rolling over for the first time, what are we missing in the moment? Technology is a revelation but also a deep sort of heartache.
While we mourn the time spent with our kids, we also mourn the time spent with our parents; somehow, the heartache is served in two ways. Someone on TikTok said to listen to ABBA’s “Slipping Through My Fingers” as you get older; it works both ways. Your children slip through your fingers, and your own mother slips through your fingers. You win big, you lose big. That’s life’s truth.
If you need a minute:
Barely awake, I let precious time go by
Then when she's gone, there's that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt I can't denySometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time
Slipping through my fingers
That old melancholy feeling. The funny trick of time. That little rabbit running around with an old watch yelling, "Oh dear! I shall be too late!" and "I can't remember who I am today!"
The scariest part is that I'm at the beginning of that motherhood time vortex. I'm being dropped into the top of a time tornado, barring its rustling winds. The truth constantly scrapes my mind that someday, I'll look back on these days and honor them … mourn them in a deep, visceral way. I think you are inside of your dream, your past. I try to set myself in a quiet kitchen when I'm 60. I try to live there so I can live in the present more. I anticipate the vortex swallowing me whole every single day. It's terrifying.
On the other hand, I often wonder if my sudden spatial awareness of time is a good thing. In a way, can my awareness slow time down? Sometimes, I feel like my blatant fear of the fact that time indeed passes saves me from ignoring that fact completely and gives me the urge to search for tools to save myself.
Meditation, documenting, and avoiding multitasking are well-known theories that slow down time. But here are a few other ways I will try to pump the breaks as a parent.
Keep a daily journal. Remember the slower moments that you don’t want to forget (i.e., a new word your toddler tried, write in detail how they reacted to a snowfall, explain how their wrists felt in your palms). I read somewhere that someone uses small index cards to write down what their toddler ate, listened to, and watched. They try to fill up one index card every day.
Try one novel experience a month. Take a pottery class. Read a new genre. Try a new recipe. These are experiences you move through merrily because they’re new, instead of sledging through the mundane routine every day.
Think about this: I read once that when you think about being a five-year-old kid, one year seems like a really long time because that’s 20% of your entire life (obviously the novelty of experiences on top of that), but when you’re 30, another year is less of a % of your life. If time is a vortex, it’s a funnel that gets smaller as we get older and time spins faster. So, how can we widen that net?
Fight against corporate America. The constant struggle of minimal celebration of success/reviews, the endless peer competition, and a meaningless grind on other people's agendas (in exchange for money) can easily numb a person. Find ways to change up your lifestyle if you can. Step away from the computer. Go on walks. Take time off. Repeat after me: Work life is fake life. Work life is fake life.
Be in nature. Find any time you can to think about nothing and everything and go touch a bush, no phone, no people, and lots of dirt.
Stop playing on your phone when you’re bored. This freaks me out the most. Time FLIES when I’m bustling around on TikTok. It literally steals minutes from me. And stop taking so many damn photos of everything. Buy a disposable camera. Paint your daughter with watercolor.
Your turn! What advice do you have to slow down time?
I simply adore Ochuko’s reading aesthetically Instagram feed. It really has everything you’d want in a book gram.
Do I need this buttery wide-leg sweat set from the Gap?
I also just bought one of these name balloon necklaces from Etsy (they’re all the rage right now) with Lila’s name on it. I’m going to wear it everywhere and give it to her one day. If you’re not mom-ing like me, this would make a really sweet bridesmaid gift!! Quick tip: Get one of the longer versions. I got the second longest one, and it’s tight on my neck.
Lila LOVES these very affordable magnetic blocks from daycare.
Just IMAGINE living in this ancient longhouse in the Welsh hillside. The yellow, warm kitchen. The thick, natural furniture and floor boards. Everything is superb. And it makes me want to haphazardly hang everything on my own home’s walls.
Once a season, I go through my “top drawer” (all bras, underwear, socks) to get rid of what I don’t wear like mismatched socks with holes, etc. I’m probably going to replace my old bras for two new loungey bralettes here and here.
I just bought the sweetest mail holder for our front entry. It was only $7! Antique stores forever.
Recent studies have shown women’s brain's age more slowly than men’s. A group of researchers reported that they have found a gene in mice that rejuvenates female brains, reports the New York Times. They also found the first step to prevent and intervene with postpartum depression. This is truly monumental. That study, on postpartum depression, is here.
One of my favorite catalogs is from The Vermont Country Store. Something about it pulls me into my childhood so deeply. I love their gift ideas so much.
How Hannah Connolly (of Notes On) writes about March. I know it’s May, but this description still applies.
The new trend “booked trips” where people take group trips to locations in books they recently read together (with a thoughtful itinerary). Recently, I read The Berry Pickers and really want to visit a blueberry farm in Maine.
I have a little sister and this New York Times article, about how siblings influence each other, is one of the more intriguing things I’ve read lately. The quote below is really beautiful. It also affirms my decision to have more than one child (if I can).
The subreddit Fridge Detective, where users deduce things about someone and their life from a picture inside their refrigerator.
This. The end.
This article was such a gift this Mother’s Day ... Thank you. I truly enjoyed reading it with my morning coffee. :) I’ve made a simple choice to help life slow down: to reach for a book instead of my phone. It’s helped me model more mindful habits for my kids. Whether I’m writing poems with my daughter or shooting hoops with my son, I’ve come to believe that shared experiences are the foundation of lasting memories. One parent once told me, “Take all the photos,” and I’ve held onto that advice. While I don’t worry much about capturing video, I love photography and those snapshots hold so many stories. With my oldest nearing 10, time feels like it’s flying. So grab a book, snuggle up, and don’t forget to journal the moments of life's gifts.