Counting in months

My wife is the kind of person who can go anywhere and she’ll run into someone she knows. A quick trip to the store, she’ll see the former boss she worked with ten years ago or a long-lost friend from grade school. Anyway, a few weeks we stopped by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, and, of course, walking out with our face masks on, she ran into a friend who had recently given birth.

The new mom was excited to be out in public and couldn’t wait to share a quick photo on her phone of her six-month-old daughter. She told my wife about how her daughter loved to sit on her lap and look at picture books, slide on the floor on her tummy, and play peekaboo. The baby liked to try to talk up a storm too.

I listened quietly to the conversation, but I was chomping at the bit. I wanted to tell my wife’s friend how my daughter started a new job in February and recently got her own place; how my oldest son is in the Marines and, from his pictures, looks like he’s been bulking up; and finally how our youngest son is taking the SATs soon and looking at colleges.

And in my mind, I added, “can you believe it, they’re 288 months, 264 months, and 192 respectively?”

Yes, I know we generally stop counting the age of our children in months after the first two or three years of life, but that doesn’t mean that a dad stops counting them. My kids are all adults, younger and smarter than me, but they’ll always be my babies even if the months are in the triple digits now.

In the end, I just said our kids were great, we love to talk with them when they call, and that we can’t wait to have them all home again some time in the distant future.