There’s a saying I’ve heard many a people say, “Enjoy your time with your children until they grow up”. One of my colleagues even relayed a scientific study that quoted how we spend almost two thirds of our entire time with our kids during their first ten years.

This weekend, during a casual conversation at the salon while getting a haircut, the owner was relaying to me how her daughters have grown up now and they hardly have time for her. She was talking about it in a humorous manner but I could also sense a tinge of sadness behind her voice at times.

As I stepped out and walked my way back home, I was reflecting on what I will miss with my daughter as the years pass by. She is eight currently, so I have technically spent more than half of my entire lifetime’s worth of time with her already!

I will surely miss her innocence. How she can ask the most simplest of questions without any prejudgements or implying anything. How she means only what she says and nothing else. And how she accepts any apologies with an open heart.

I will miss her laughter and the unbridled fun she has right now. How she goads us to tickle her, just because she likes it. Or how she finds joy in the smallest of things around her and reminds us of the beauty around us.

I will miss her curiosity and ability to grasp things. How she asks all kinds of questions because she genuinely wants to know. How she believes in things someone has told her and we have to then make efforts to prove it otherwise, in case she has learnt something wrong. How she is able to make sense of things so rapidly, while sometimes we are at sea.

I will miss her banter with us and the endless conversations she initiates. How she can strike up a chat on random things and go on about them for a long time. How she tells us everything, whether good or bad, because that’s how she feels like.

I will miss a lot more. I maybe don’t know yet. But what I do know is that as she grows up further, some of these things will go away from her behavior or change over time. She will surely have lesser time for us then.

Hopefully, I will be able to make the most of the times we have with her now and conserve all these memories while we still have the time to make them…