There is a car commercial that depicts a young woman getting ready to leave on a trip.  Her voice is that of a toddler, which is how her father sees her.  As one who is knee deep in the parental time warp, I totally get it.  I wouldn’t buy the car, but I definitely understand distorted parental vision.  I could have sworn the three foot tall pteredactyl stomping around my house just got home from the hospital last week.  For that matter, didn’t I just celebrate my 30th birthday?  I sure did, about ten years ago.  

   I don’t feel that much older from day to day.  Occasionally, I get an obnoxious reminder of the contrary when I’m at my gym or bending over to pick up my daughter.  I’m not sure I even look much different than I did ten years ago except now the grey hair is getting easier to find. 

   Where I can see the changes are when I look at my daughter and my mom.  At two and a half, the changes in Claire are rapid and frequently surprising.  Every parent thinks their child is a genius but again, it’s a distorted view.  It’s not so much that she is brilliant but that I’m exhausted and unwittingly under constant surveillance.

   For a period of about twenty years, my mother was around forty.  Her hair was always the same color and she was constantly working.  Now that my father is gone and she is in a new, smaller home, she has reached her sixties.  I can see the age spots and the grey hair and how she gets tired now.  It saddens me in patches to understand that these are the days I need to hang onto with tooth and nail, leaving claw marks behind me.

   To our children, we start out brilliant, then we get stupid, and then as they get older, we slowly regain our intelligence.  At least, that’s how I hope it goes for me.  My mother thinks Claire is the smartest creature on the planet.  This must be in defiance of her mother’s DNA as I am increasingly convinced my mom thinks I’m a complete idiot. 

‘You have too much stuff.’ ( I hadn’t noticed , my eyes were closed.)

‘You need to get the pool cleaned.’ ( You mean the water isn’t supposed to match the grass?)

‘It’s dusty in here.’ (But I was saving those cobwebs for Halloween.)

There are a plethora of observations like these she’s convinced I need to be told because they aren’t done yet.  See previous paragraph about hanging onto these days blah blah blah.

   My mother and I have different priorities.  I choose not to put the housework ahead of other activities like playing with Claire, napping, baking and working out.  Cleaing is lower on my totem pole.  I’m sure she thinks my pole is upside down.  

   There are parts of her advice that I do cherish.  I know virtually nothing about plants and flowers and she is remarkably handy at small repairs.  I also do not know how to make pierogi from scratch, something I definitely plan to learn.  I do not know if I’ll gain any IQ points between now and the time I lose her.  Every April I get a little smarter when I do her tax return.  I can certainly hang onto that.  In the meantime, for now at least, my baby girl thinks I’m smart - but what does she know?