Too Short a Season

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

~Shakespeare

Yesterday, blogger and podcaster Alicia Hutchinson posted on Instagram that she’s been struggling with work-life-home balance and is pulling back in order to focus more on her four walls and those inside them. The comments from readers were fully supportive, all saying something along the lines of, “Yes, our kids grow so quickly. Put your family first. This is the right decision.”

It was a timely post for me to see–a busy internet entrepreneur loosening the grip of the social media tide on her life in order to “gather her chicks” and narrow her focus. Just the other day, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 popped into my head as I noticed that my almost-eight-year-old’s dress is suddenly three inches above her knees. Time to order the next size up–again.

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” Shakespeare wrote. And while he was talking about the ephemeral quality of romantic love, to me, in the midst of raising two girls who are all-too-quickly growing up, his words bring to mind my love for these small people who were given to me for such a little time to feed and clothe, to snuggle and comfort, to help and guide. Summer is an appropriate metaphor for childhood, it seems to me–a string of (mostly) golden days that float gracefully like bubbles over the grass, coming to settle one by one with a tiny pop as they combust. And while Shakespeare suggests that memory put to words can hold people in place, unchanging, I know better. Often, it seems my memories are piling up with unbidden speed behind me as my children race ahead to the next developmental stage.

We have a little joke at our house. Any time an article of clothing suddenly doesn’t fit, I say, “I told you to stop growing. Why won’t you stop growing?” Whichever girl is being mock-chastised will giggle madly and say, “But Mom, I can’t stop growing! I’ve told you! I have to grow!”

Already? my heart whispers sadly.

Alicia’s post reminded me of all this, which is good because I tend to forget it in the flurry of work, homeschool lessons, evening activities, and weekend errands that shape so much of our lives. I’m always struggling to carve out time for myself, and sometimes I feel resentful when someone is calling me out of bed for a third sip of water. I just want a few minutes to read my novel or knit a couple of rows. I want five minutes alone without someone yelling my name. I’m more of an introvert than I ever knew.

But, I remind myself, this won’t last. Savor the snuggles. Tuck them in again–and again. Read another chapter out loud. Play the game. Bake the cookies. Sing the song. Make the craft. Go to the park. Have teatime. Leave the mess. Look away from the screen. Be present.

Be present. Be present. Be present.

Savor. Savor. Savor.

It’s sad that we have to remind ourselves to tune in to our people, but when I stop my racing thoughts long enough, I remember that my children are my most precious gift, an inheritance with which I have been entrusted, and I only have them for a season. Two decades-ish. I’ve written here before about how the job of a parent is to give her children roots and wings, and I still believe that’s true. I can’t count on more than eighteen years. (In truth, I can’t count on tomorrow.)

We live in an age where children scatter. My mother never lived more than twenty miles from her parents, but I live more than six hundred miles from where I grew up, and my children may fly farther. When that day comes, it will feel like I wrote this post five minutes ago–I know that. Where will the time have gone? I think, in the end, Shakespeare knew what he was talking about.

So in the meantime, I want to give them the best possible childhood. I want to give them the best of myself. I want to create the kind of home and family that will sustain them their whole lives, not so much a physical place as a foundation of faith and love, support and encouragement, a circle in which they are known and loved for who they are, for who God created them to be.

Ultimately, this means showing them the love of Christ, the cornerstone on which all of life rests. That is the mission of this too-short season, isn’t it, the goal of the summer of our children’s growing-up years? The goal is, and always has been, Jesus.

Harmony Harkema has loved the written word for as long as she can remember. A former English teacher turned editor, she has spent the past nine years in the publishing industry. A writer herself in the fringe hours of her working-and-homeschooling mom life, Harmony also has a heart for leading and coaching aspiring writers. Harmony lives in Memphis with her husband and two small daughters. She blogs at harmonyharkema.com.

Photograph © James Wheeler, used with permission