By Shannon Williams
@shannon_scribbles

The best days of my life are behind me.

At least that’s how I understand it. That’s what those gray-haired women told me time and again over the past eight years. They would see me pushing a cart loaded down with three small children and a week’s worth of food as our paths collided in the dairy aisle, and they would smile before they spoke. 

“Oh,” they would say. And I might be hyperbolic here but I picture them with their hands on their hearts and misty expressions in their eyes. “These are the best days. Enjoy them.”

The conclusion I drew from this was simple: It’s all downhill from here. This is as good as it gets.

But I’m beyond those days now. This past September, on an unseasonably warm Friday morning, all three of my kids stepped on bus number 537. My youngest, the Kindergartener, ran onto the bus without any signs of hesitation. I waved as they went off to elementary school together for the first time.

I watched the bus as it pulled away and walked back to my house to reheat my coffee. Aside from the dull sound of the microwave running it was very, very quiet. Quiet enough that I could hear myself think, which had been a novelty for the better part of a decade. And after all those years of being home with small children, it was terrible, but mostly wonderful.

***

It sometimes seems like we have a hard time moving on from things. Society tends to look back on everything with nostalgia. Even things that at the time may have been more “meh” than “time of your life.” Because I remember hearing those “these are the best days of your life” words in high school, too. Family members told me this. Mid-’90s and early-‘00s teen movies tried to sell me this, though my high school broke out into far less spontaneous singing and my wardrobe looked nothing like what Cher Horowitz or Regina George wore. 

As if high school is as good as it gets.

Because then there was college. Another time that might as well have “ENJOY IT WHILE YOU CAN” flashing around campus in neon lights. And yes, college was fun. I went to my share of parties, spent a memorable night building the biggest snowman you’ve ever seen on central campus, and frequently sat up until morning with friends. (Before getting up for an 8 a.m. class, as only a 19-year-old can.) But I spent just as many nights working on projects at midnight as I did having fun. And hanging out with friends often meant walking up sticky apartment staircases smelling of cheap beer at questionable hours of the night.

My husband and I got married fresh out of college. (We were babies. Somehow no one stopped us.) Once we returned from the bubble of our Jamaican honeymoon, it was back to the reality of an apartment so small that if you stood at the edge of the living room, you could see every inch of the place. He was in grad school, and I was trying to make enough money to support us and pay off our student loans. My futon from college and the folding table and chairs that functioned as our dining table were our crowning pieces of furniture. Bless our newlywed hearts.

All the Disney movies and frou-frou wedding cards gushed that this here, this time for real, was as good as it gets. And maybe all you need is love but surely furniture not made for the express purpose of collapsing wasn’t too much to ask?

Soon enough, I made it to those days the gray-haired women were misty-eyed about. Three years into married life, I held twin babes, one in each arm. And just two years later, we added a third to the mix. (No one stopped us. Again.)

***

When my youngest was a few months old, we tackled potty-training the twins. My son took to it as though he’d been doing it all his life but my daughter, despite showing all the same potty readiness signs as her twin brother, was less impressed. We’d spent a semi-successful weekend extolling the joys of underwear until my husband left us to our own devices on Monday morning.

I don’t remember how we all ended up in the powder room. What I do remember is the noise of Daniel Tiger filtering in from the living room, where my older son bounced around wearing only his underwear. I stood in the small bathroom around the corner pleading with my daughter to just sit on the toilet a little longer.

“You can do it!” I cheered her on.

“No potty!” she cried. And then the tears came, “I don’ want to!”

“Just stay there a few more minutes!” I insisted, blocking the door in desperation. Oh, and the baby was nursing. As in, attached to my right boob while I stood over my two-year-old on the potty-training toilet. Probably wondering what he’d been born into. That’s when my son ran into the room announcing that he needed to use the potty.

So, to recap: Daniel Tiger blaring from the living room. Two two-year-olds: one crying because he wants to use the toilet, another crying because she doesn’t want to use the toilet. Me, half naked, baby at my chest, pleading with the two-year-old on the potty to just stay there. “Flush and wash and be on your way!” interspersed with the cacophony of my pleading, my daughter’s tears, and my son’s insistent shrieks that it’s his turn now.

These were the days everyone was wistful for? THIS?

That’s what flashed across my mind, pushing any tears into choking, disbelieving laughter. The women in the Target aisles told me, a sleep-deprived, stretched-out bra-wearing new mom that these were the best days of my life. Not only that, they wished they could go back to the days their own children were small.

I didn’t believe them.

Or at least, my belief only stretched so far. I believe part of them wants to go back. But really if they went back, all the way back, to days upon days of multiple littles, I think soon enough they’d be like the rest of us. They’d be yelling “Just GO to SLEEP!” because it’s week three of a toddler fighting bedtime for a solid two hours while you’re also rocking a baby, and you’re all covered in spit-up. Maybe they, too, would find themselves in a crazed, potty-training scenario—cracking up with maniacal laughter.

I think they’d just as soon be over it. Soon enough they’d remember why they subsisted on coffee and PBJ scraps and tried to muster up enough energy to sing “The Wheels on the Bus” for the eleventy-hundreth time that day.

***

Not long ago, I posted to Instagram how my kids played some elaborate game with Duplos and stuffed animals so that my husband and I didn’t have to get out of bed until 8:45 on a Saturday morning. Miracles.

“Welcome to the next stage of parenting,” a friend messaged in response.

“Babies are cute and all, but give me elementary-aged kids any day,” I replied.

We’ve leveled up, and I love it. They’re still young enough to think my husband and I are cool but independent enough they can walk down the street on their own to play with friends. They can get their own breakfast, even if it only consists of boxes of cereal and toast slathered in gobs of butter. Their personalities are developing even further and they’re getting really, really interesting. Just this morning my youngest told me all he was learning in science about trees—how they suck up water through their roots and the water travels up the trunk and all throughout the tree, all the way out to the branches and the leaves. “Did you know that, mommy?” he asked.

Do I want to go back? Not exactly. On the one hand, it’s easier to say I miss those days here on this parent-of-elementary-aged-kids side of things. But I don’t feel like the misty-eyed ladies in the dairy aisle, either. 

Honestly I wouldn’t go back to any of those times. To high school, to college, to being a newlywed. They were all nice in their own ways but best days of my life? That sounds like a tall order. Forget looking backwards. This right here? This is good.

With any luck, I have another 50 or more years left on this Earth. How could life possibly be worth living if I gave into the notion that the best of it was over? What would there be to look forward to if I thought that high school or college or, yes, young motherhood were As Good As It Gets?

On some level, this is reassuring. It reminds me there is good in every season. The carefree days of high school merged into the independence of college. The flexibility of early married life became subsumed by parenthood. Babies might be charming but so are elementary kids who’ve gained a measure of autonomy along with their gap-toothed smiles. (Not to mention toilet skills.) Soon enough, sooner than I care to admit, I’ll be finding the good in the seasons of the tween and teenage years. 

But for today, I have two eight-year-olds and a six-year-old. We ate pancakes with sprinkles for breakfast and played a family coding game after dinner. I realized my twin boy had grown out of every single long-sleeved shirt he owns, and I was The Most Unfair Mom Ever for not allowing ten extra minutes of iPad time. They played outside in the chilled autumn air and I watched them hang upside down from the monkey bars. It was mostly wonderful.

God forbid the best days of my life are behind me.

Guest essay written by Shannon Williams. Shannon is an interior designer, writer, reader, Minnesota native, and Enneagram 1. She and her husband have always been overachievers so they kicked off parenthood by having three kids in two years. She believes firmly in the power of iced coffee and pedicures. You can find her sporadically at shannonscribbles.net and much more frequently on Instagram.