Counting the hours

Life is made of 700,800 hours. Before kindergarten, you have 43,800 hours with your child. Are you counting them?

Did you know the average human only has 700,800 hours from the time they are born until they die? But I am not going to delve into that concept. I will have an existential crisis. And break out in hives, which I really can’t afford to do since I am alone with the kids tonight and can’t take Benadryl that will force me to sleep through the nighttime parenting emergencies that inevitably occur.

So we are not going to talk about that trickling hourglass that we all have hanging over our heads (sorry for the morbidity). But we are going to talk about hours. I think the complexity of adulthood, especially if you layer in parenting or elder care or even having too many dogs, all boils down to the fact that we are counting hours.

Even if you don’t realize it, counting those hours drives your decision making. We get caught up in the day-to-day count, feeling like you have to rush to the next thing or causing you to regret how time was spent.

Conversely, the magic of childhood is not really grasping the hours. Childhood is sunlight streaming through the windows of your room, illuminating the imagination and possibilities for your day. It is the simple joy of playing outside, going to get ice cream, or a special excursion to the zoo. Hours are slipping by, but childhood makes them lazy and charming.

I remember when that started to change. When I started counting the hours as a pre-teen. But even in adolescence, hour counting isn’t the same as when you are an adult. You count the hours until Christmas or summer break. You count the hours until you are in high school. Then in high school, you count the hours until you are a senior. Then you count the hours until you graduate and can start the next step of your life. All that time in school as an adolesence takes up 14,400 hours, and you count all of them with jittery impatience.

It is a foolish endeavor to count down and rush our adolescence, but none of us realize it. In those years, counting the hours is like waiting for Santa Claus to come on Christmas Eve. We are anxious to get to the next big reveal, the next “ta-da!” behind the curtain of life. We see adults confidently carving their own paths and making decisions with all of this knowledge. We want that power, that freedom.

After high school, the hour counting starts to change a bit as you take on more of the adult responsibilities, little by little. But there is still that Christmas Eve excitement in those days. I remember counting the hours until I could transfer out of my fully paid community college scholarship and go to Mizzou. Then at Mizzou, I counted the hours until I could graduate, even if I had no idea where I was going once I did.

When I started long distance dating my now-husband in college, I counted down the hours until I could feel less awkward and uncertain and just feel that easy comfortability that relationships build into. I counted hours until I could drive home and see him. Eventually, I counted the hours until we could be married and just start.

Once you start that adulting journey, however, that Christmas Eve excitement becomes more and more rare. The hours change until you start frantically calculating.

But, as they say, kids change everything. When you get pregnant, you get a peek of that Christmas Eve excitement when you are anxious to meet your baby. Those nine months only take up 6,570 hours; some days feel like much longer, other days seem to go by in a flash. Yet there are still the hours counting until you are out of that miscarriage high percentage probability. Counting the hours between appointments to make sure everything is okay with your baby.

Then when they are born, the hours are a weird Alice in Wonderland experience. Logically, you know there are 730 hours where your baby is a newborn. Sleep deprivation makes it harder to count the hours between bottles and changings or count the hours of actual sleep you had. There are days that seem 72 hours long and then suddenly you realize too many hours have passed. You blink and 8,760 hours have passed to get to their one year birthday.

You start counting the hours it takes to prepare all their meals and wonder, “Did I really eat at this frequency and volume before I had kids?”. Counting the hours until they can walk. Until they start talking. Until they start potty training and you can get rid of diapers. Until you can flip their car seat forward so they stop getting car sick facing backwards with their legs scrunched up.

I think all parents have that moment where you realize hours are slipping and you need to make the most of them. In the adulting world where we are constantly counting the hours until the next decision making moment, between bills or trips or home improvements or buying a new vehicle, having a kid is a stark contrast to that rush, shining a light on how fast it all goes.

But all of us in the throes of parenting tiny humans are so overwhelmed, so tired, so excited, so nostalgic, so frustrated that it is incredibly hard to hit that pause button on the hours to make them lazy and charming. Our children are experiencing that magic of slow hours, but the checklists and decisions parents need to make causes our hours to go fast.

Let’s talk a little about perspective. When my oldest daughter was a baby, our family couldn’t afford full-time daycare. Luckily my husband’s firefighter schedule made it so we could put her in daycare part-time and she could spend days with her dad while I went into the office full-time. When the pandemic happened, I pulled her out of daycare and life slowed down enough that I could see the lazy and charming hours again. In the midst of worry and uncertainty, I got to enjoy my two year old and capture hours that would have been lost.

That glimpse of childhood enchantment helped guide our family’s decision to only put our kids in daycare and preschool part-time. Not only did this allow our finances some breathing room, but it also gave us some precious hours in their lazy and charming world. To be honest, every day is a challenge when trying to balance adult responsibilities, but the opportunity to capture those magic hours is irreplaceable.

When my oldest started kindergarten this year, the 43,800 hours of her five years of life caught up to me. Those hours were gone. They were full of memories, but they were done. That door was closed. Now my baby who was walking into school with her oversized-for-her-body sparkly unicorn backpack would spend approximately 1,200 hours a year in school. Hours that were spent together giggling, learning, exploring, cuddling, sometimes crying, and loving were now done.

Before long, she will be foolishly counting the 14,400 hours of her school life down with jittery impatience, like I did. That hit home for me. Now hours are more important than ever. I constantly calculate our time together:

• How many hours do I have to spend with my youngest daughter before she goes to kindergarten?

• How many hours do I get to spend with my oldest each night after school?

• How many hours can we all be together around mine and my husband’s schedules?

• How many hours do we have together this weekend?

Then I have to calculate the responsibilities and self-care:

• How many hours do I spend working out this week?

• How many hours do I need to invest in cleaning the house?

• How many hours will it take me to plan food inventory and grocery shop?

• How many hours can I dedicate to myself and my husband to keep our relationship strong?

• How many hours are promised to events or appointments, either individually or together?

Subtract all those hours off our time together as a family, around all the hours my husband and I need to spend on our careers.

Then the biggest question - do I have any time left for personal pursuits or passions? How much time do I sacrifice with my kids when the hours are closing in on our time together?

The hours are moving targets every day, week, and month. As we calculate and move chess pieces to manage time, it slips. What I realized and something I work hard to do (and fail quite often) is to prioritize the hours I know I won’t get back so I don’t look back and regret how I spent them. I already have enough of those regretful hours in my mind. The challenge every parent faces, whether they are aware of it or not, is how to spend our time in the vein of childhood magic, lazy and charming, to make the most of our 700,800 hours. If we are lucky.

I would love to hear the perspective from parents with older kids, adult kids, or grandkids! How do you feel about counting hours in those different stages of life? Or, if you don’t have kids, do you find yourself counting hours like this or in a different way?