The Magic of a Million Hellos

Parenting is embracing a million tiny deaths, including your own

Hellos and Good-byes

He was super excited. His first time walking to school on his own.

This is the magical end of grade four.

Like all magic, the alchemy comes with a cost, a tiny, beautiful slice of a fee, saying goodbye to my son who needed me for navigation, protection, and comfort on his walk to school. The magic steals the kid I’ve known and loved and in return I get this amazing new son, this more worldly person.

I’ll miss the kid the magic took.

I’m excited to meet this knew one too.

Parenthood is saying goodbye to someone you love and hello to someone new, over and over again. A natural cycle of magic that transmogrifies the one you love the most into the new; their old self gone forever, their new self here for now. I held my son in the crook of my arm, that baby is gone now. In the best way, this means that parenthood is the acceptance of a million tiny deaths and the welcoming of a million little hellos.

I hope this transformative magic can help prepare me for my turn to pay the final fee (though I’m in no rush).

The magic is so normal it is easy to miss. It takes its slice while generously leaving a breadcrumb trail of memories. A path to a warm blanket on a cold day so I can wrap myself in the time when he for some reason wore a helmet everywhere, held my hand at corners, played with clay in the car.

He is forever older than he was, which is good. I don’t want the magic to go in reverse. Part of the excitement is getting to know this new kid, to see what he will do next.

Body snatchers style, it is not always obvious when the kid I’ve loved has been replaced. “Oh,” I suddenly wonder, “Did we already have our last walk to school together? I didn’t know.”

We’re Lucky and We’re Going to Die

There are missed good-byes and hellos on the other end too.

My almost 82 year old dad has dementia now. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to. Like most of life it happened so slowly that it was sudden. We find ways to make it work. We help him share the memories he can, shakily wrapping us all in his blanket of nostalgia and story. That works for a bit, until it doesn’t.

The latest version of the dad I’ve known is gone. The new one is harder to say hi too. I didn’t know to say good-bye to the last version of my dad who could...

I know when I would have said it.

Maybe not so many years ago were visiting the prairies in the winter (seems it’s always winter when we visit). We sat up late sharing stories like we always do. The ultimate moment of the trip when this newest version of Dad, a proud Poppa, showed his three year old grandson how to better jump off of the living room couch. Our son had been half hoping, half sliding off the couch. Poppa decided to show him how to improve his jump by leaping with both feet. Too old for this type of thing Poppa did a demo first, leaping across the living room. Then together they climbed the couch, Poppa towering over the living room, his grandson excited next to him, and they jumped, and jumped.

The next time I saw Dad in person my brother called me first. “Dad’s gotten a lot older,” he said, and he was right.

But we’re lucky.

Luckier than many to have so much residual magic. Dad’s journey has allowed him to see in my life all the things a parent holding a baby in the crook of their arm hopes to see.

We’re lucky.

Paying the Price

I am excited to meet the many new versions of my son. I want for us all the incredible life events that year by year add up to, oh shit. See this is the problem, all the things I want for him, and us, and me, add up to me being dead.

Shit.

And I want him to get to grow old meeting new versions of his own children, which leads to the same ultimate conclusion for him too. Double shit. Fuck even.

The beautiful magic takes a small fee here and there as the people we’ve been disappear into nothing. The fee feels infinitesimally small in ourselves as we walk to school for the first time, turn into teens, replace our high school selves. It is more obvious when we watch our children pay it, but it gives so much that the trade is almost immeasurable. The cost feels feels incredibly expensive when our parents, our friends, and eventually, ourselves, are taken away by the magic.

I love these people so fucking much and I don’t want them to die. I don’t want to die, but I do not want the static alternative. I want to say bye and hi to my son. I want to do the same to myself as I grow and learn and change. I want all of the incredible transformative gifts the magic brings, and its gifts are many.

Today

My son had his first solo walk to school today and I’m so happy for him as he coasts into the mystery of being a tween.

And yes, it has led to thinking about future goodbyes and hellos and death. But right now we have so much more luck to have, so many more exciting versions of each other to meet and remember.

Today we are very much alive.

So, hi there, kid who can walk himself to school. What are you like?

I can’t wait to find out.

Thank you for reading!

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I write about leadership and life at ianrowebot.medium.com I hope you will check out my other work too.

Thank you,

Ian