The Quintessential Existential Mom

“You loved me more when I was a baby,” said my seven-year-old son Walker as we looked at our family album.

I nuzzled his hair, and said, “I adore you more every day. I loved how cozy you were then, but now you’re able to talk.  You can read to me, and I don’t have to change your diapers.”

Walker seemed satisfied with my incomplete answer. I turned off his bedroom light and went back to the photos. There he was, newborn, in a penguin pantsuit with matching cap. His skin looked red and blotchy, and his eyes were shut. At six months, he was still bald, but smiling, like a wise Buddha.  At two, he had long wisps of yellow hair and clutched a Thomas the Train.

Now, Walker’s head is covered in blond curls, and his two front teeth are missing. He looks like a vampire cherub.

I love all the Walkers. To me, he is an ever-transforming miracle. 

I will always remember all that Walker was. I know that’s how many parents get through their children’s adolescences. When their teenager has baggy pants hanging off his butt, body odor and a nipple ring, they remember a four-year-old who loved dinosaurs. When fifteen-year-old Walker is embarrassed to have me pick him up at school, I’ll remember when he asked me to marry him.

I change, too.

The last time my parents visited, my mother stared at the age furrow on my forehead. It must feel odd to have one’s children begin to look old.

I believe in an afterlife, but I wonder how it works. Do we get to pick our age?  

I would prefer the body I had at eighteen, and the mind I had at forty. I want Walker to be a little boy, but I doubt he’d make the same choice.  

Whatever ages we chose, I think we would eventually get bored.  

Human life is spent in motion, and I don’t think I could adjust to being static. We exist as trajectory lines, not points, and I suspect that in heaven, we will get to evolve, too.  

By Beth Touchette