There’s no way of knowing when your children are toddlers that there will come a day when they won’t need you every second of every minute of every day. There’s no way of knowing you’ll eventually come up for air and this won’t last forever. How could you know that eventually your body would be your own again and you could move about the world untethered?

When you are in it, it takes forever.

There’s no way of knowing when someone asks for space how long they’ll take, how long it will be until they circle back around, or if they ever will. How could you know the relationship that has been laid on the line is enough to span the new gap created?

There are few guarantees in life, and even fewer where love is concerned.

There’s no way of knowing the risk will pay off, that the reward will outweigh the struggle. We don’t know when we jump whether we’ll land on our feet, all we know is that staying still feels like death and there’s a limit to how many more times we can wake up and do the same things, have the same conversations, wear the same clothes.

There’s so little we know, even less that we’re told.

Even if there was some way for the young mother to grasp what the kind elderly lady in the grocery store is droning on about regarding the passing of time and cherishing moments, when their children bite their fingers wrapped around grocery carts or throw up their lunch all over the car seats on the way home, time will stand still, and hours will refuse to pass. Seconds turn into centuries and their previous lives with flash before their eyes all golden and glistening, tempting them to throw in the towel and run.

What are we told about moments and days and years? Who is sounding the alarm that commercials of adults returning to college and submitting projects over warm bowls of spaghetti in clean kitchens while the rest of their households sleep is largely false advertising? Show me a moment where this is happening and there isn’t someone hunched over a laptop in restaurants or at ball games, or with their other hand stirring the boiling pot of spaghetti. That when they hit submit, the kitchen won’t be clean, and its possible someone is calling for their attention.

How do we know who is in our life for a short time or a long time? And how do we go about letting go gracefully? Or even disgracefully? Why do we act like our big love is reserved for one person and that our hearts aren’t strewn across our families and friends near and far? What do we know about the ache of missing someone who is just out of reach? When best friends live countries apart?

I knew a lot more in my 20s than in my 30s. I know even less as I travel through life. No one told me you can sit in a fifth-grade choir concert and have your ears wincing from the notes but have your heart wincing with ache because suddenly there is a half-grown man in front of you who came from your womb and is now on a stage under bright lights singing songs you’ve never heard before. While theme songs from children’s shows still ring in your ears from years and years of repetition, he’s now spending time away from you, learning things you didn’t teach him.

There’s no way to know how happiness and sadness weave together in such a tragically beautiful way – how our hearts can break and get pieced back together in the same fell swoop. And then how in other times that same crashing happens in slow motion over years and years and years.

So, what do we do with the unknown?

We do what we do with all the other parts of our lives we can’t control – turn them over in our hands for a while, release them when they are too heavy, and pick them back up again when we have the strength. This could take seconds, or it could take years. 

But, most importantly, we tell the truth about what is happening to us.

There’s no way of knowing who is listening, and who needs to hear it.