"That can't possibly be right, dear," Mrs. Warner said. "That would mean she was 15 when she had you."
"Well her age ends in a zero," I said.
"She must be 30 then."
We lined up single file in preparation for our return to our classroom. The trek would take us down the hallway spanning the entire building. Just before we embarked, my stomach churned. "She must be 30." Mrs. Warner was right. In that moment I realized my mom was 10 years older than I had thought, and we would have 10 less years together.
I was five the first time I felt the ineffable sadness of finitude. Suddenly I'm 30, and I feel it again as my whole belly moves with my own daughter kicking my right hip. I ask myself how old I will be when she graduates from college. How old my parents will be. How long she will know my dog Sophie. What age she will be when she realizes our time together is finite.
"That can't possibly be right," I tell myself. "That would mean we only have a meager few decades."
The thought is almost too much to bear as I prepare for the long trek down the final 15-week stretch of pregnancy into the span of motherhood. The ineffable sadness grips me, and yet there's something beautiful in it all too.
Though my parents and I have 10 less years together than I had thought at five, I also realize we are deeply united by being 30. by human experience. by parenthood. We forever share a narrative arc in different time settings, shifted from each other by a few years but bound by the cycle of all things.
I can't wait for my daughter to feel the ineffable joy of that sacred dichotomy.
