A Year

Are we going for a long time, my three-year-old son asks without missing a beat. We are sitting on the floor in his room: he is busy with his duplo blocks, and I am packing our bags.

I pause and look up, scanning his face, which is partially turned away from me as he focuses on the tower he is building. He continues playing, but his question hangs in the air between us, heavy like concrete or the intense heatwave that overwhelmed the country for days. I am afraid, but I want only to protect him from what he might feel when I answer it.

As I study him, I think of how change happens slowly, day by day; of how, suddenly, it happens fast. One leaf falls to the ground - and then another and another and another until a tree is bare: until suddenly, it’s autumn.

For a while nothing much changes, and then, everything does all at once.

We are selling the nappy changer, the cot, the carry cot. We are giving away our baby toys, because we cannot take them with us; when we return, we will not need or use them anymore, and there is no point in keeping them until then, in storage, piling dust. When we return, we will no longer have two babies: we will have a two-and-a-half year old and a four-and-a-half year old, and everything will have changed.

It

is

a long time, I reply, quietly: not a very

very

long time, but a long time nonetheless.

We call it a

year

.

~ 

This is the first post in a series called Conversations with Kids. If you would like to contribute to this series, please get in touch and send us your work.