My father often liked to play Harry Chapin’s maudlin 1974 hit Cat’s in the Cradle, about a man who’s too busy working to spend time with his son and misses all the big moments in his life – his first steps, his first words, his first day of school.
Which was ironic, because like most parents of gen X latchkey kids like me, my father was hardly ever around, always busy at work or with his other interests and engagements. I can’t remember that he ever came to anything I did at school, and he didn’t seem interested in anything I did or cared about.
A few years ago my mother digitised all the old family albums and it struck me how few photos there were of her from infancy to adulthood. There’s only one photo of her as a child, another couple as a teenager. Only one of her wedding, and a few more after her marriage and arrival in Australia.
Although there are more photos of my brother and me, years seem to pass between them. There are no more than maybe 100 between my first baby photo and graduation.
Our children were the first generation to have their childhoods so exhaustively documented. I have hard drives filled with thousands of pictures I’m yet to go through, much less actually organise into albums.
I recorded every moment of their lives, from the moment we discovered we were pregnant. Their births. Their first step. First word. First days at school.
But despite all those countless photos I can’t really remember much of that time.
Perhaps it’s because, in another irony, as some studies have shown, taking photos actually impairs our memories of moments and events.
Now, as my older daughter, about to do her HSC, stands on the threshold of adulthood, I feel as though the early years of my children have flashed by like that devastating montage in Up!, our lives together flickering past in a single moment. How quickly all those years have gone, even as it felt as though every day was never-ending when they were little.
Sometimes I’ll look at old videos from when they were babies and toddlers. The photos are one thing and, while they sometimes rekindle old memories, there’s almost a kind of visual fatigue, reminding me I haven’t sorted them yet.
But those little ghosts really come alive when you hear their babyish voices, their little gurgles and malapropisms.
I hear myself saying off camera, “Why isn’t she doing it? Why won’t she do it?” – likely, walking or dancing or doing something cute, which didn’t happen once the camera was on. Then the video cutting out after a minute, or even a few seconds.
And I wonder what it was I wanted them to do, and how it could possibly have been any better than seeing them just as they were. Why didn’t I just keep the video rolling?
Although at first I wondered why I didn’t take more videos, now I wish I’d spent more time actually being in the moment than worrying about getting the right shot of it.
Parenthood is a beautiful, heartbreaking process of letting go. Every first – first bath, first walk, first bicycle ride – is in its own way a last. One day you don’t read bedtime stories any more. The next you have no idea what’s going on in their lives.
I regret all those times I wasn’t paying enough attention: not the firsts but those other those little evanescent moments between naps and playtimes and Dora the Explorer and tantrums and everything else that often get missed in the relentless busyness of raising toddlers, when you’re constantly watching for danger and thinking a couple of hours ahead.
Sometimes I see a toddler wittering on to their mum or dad and I’m overwhelmed with longing.
How I wish I’d been more present. How I wish I’d enjoyed that time together more and appreciated their constant attention. How I wish I’d listened more to that nattering. How I wish I’d remembered more. How I wish I’d realised how quickly that time would pass, instead of wishing playtime was over already, thinking of all the things we still had to get done before bedtime – especially when, despite all the unvarying routines of dressing and feeding and playing and napping, they constantly changed so much in those early years.
When I asked my wife why we – or at least I – didn’t appreciate the girls more when they were little, she replied: “Because we were exhausted. Toddlers are hard work!”
Of course she’s right. Nostalgia conveniently glosses over all the times you didn’t video because you were up to your arms in poo or up to there with tears.
And raising teenagers can be almost as exhausting as raising toddlers, with much more complex challenges. Where once I could do anything, now I know nothing.
At the end of Chapin’s song, the absent father finally wants to spend time with his son but discovers his son is too busy. And, like him, I eagerly want to spend time with my children, even as they’re now busy with their own lives.
Like lots of teenagers – much less kids “oversharented” on social media – they hate having their photo taken. So, while I sometimes find myself zoning out when they talk about some YouTuber or influencer I’ve never heard of, I keep reminding myself how quickly these increasingly precious moments will pass: unrecorded but hopefully not forgotten.