“Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older.
When did they?”
I received an SMS text message this morning that brought a lump to my throat. It was from my son. The apple of eye. My lovely little lad. It read, simply, ‘Hi dad’.
Why the impact?
Because it is the first text he’s ever sent me.
Let me explain. We bought him a cheap phone for Christmas so that he can stay in touch when he’s ‘playing out’. It’s a purely practical purchase. (I in no way shape or form want him to grow up too quickly and he has to earn his PAYG credits!) But that first text message delivered a flood of realisations.
He starts secondary school in September. He’s a teenager in little over 2.5 years. He’s growing up. How long before he shies away from his dad's kiss? Or his occasional pre-pubescent moodiness turns into fully-fledged teenage angst?
Where has my little boy gone?
I’ve talked before about the way our kids shed their skins over time. How sometimes, even overnight, they can make a leap forward and change into someone you don’t quite know as well.
But sometimes it’s not a change of character that makes you realise they’re growing up. It’s an action. A little first. In this case, a two word text message.
It’s nothing yet it’s everything.
A small moment in time that means and represents so much.
This is why Memory Pools exists.
As the song lyrics at the start of this post recall, Children grow up so quickly. In the blink of an eye that totally dependant baby is sending you text messages. And what do we have to show for those years? Endless photos and videos from holidays, birthdays and Christmases. School books and certificates. Somehow it doesn't quite represent the rich colours, high emotions and sheer 'experience' of bringing up children.
We're great at recollecting and recording the big milestones our kids achieve – those first words, that first day at school, the birthdays and holidays... but so much of the joy of bringing up kids is the small things they say and do, the smiles, the funny little incidents, the confused sentence that has you doubled up in laughter as you drive to the seaside.
(Sometime it can even be that they’re big enough to ride all the rides at Alton Towers.)
Memory Pools aims to help you capture, share and relive the precious memories of bringing up your kids by making it easy to record those little moments via texts and emails. The things that so colour our experience of parenthood, yet can be so easily forgotten.
Moments like that very first text message from your 'little baby' and how it makes you feel.
Your children grow up in the blink of an eye. Memory Pools aims to help the memories and wonderful moments live on.
(By the way, I responded with ‘Hello darling! How are you?’
He didn’t get back.
Typical.)