They’re born, these tiny little creatures, and then you blink and boom, they’re sitting, crawling, walking, talking.

Blink. Toddlers.

Blink. School age.

Blink. Puberty is right around the corner.

I’m afraid to blink, because before I know it, they’ll be grown and gone.

Every blink is a tremendous leap of faith that you’re not screwing it up horribly. It’s a prayer that you and your child make it through to that next blink mostly intact, mostly sane, mostly happy, mostly moving forward. Parenting can seem like one of the poorest investment portfolios, because, if we do it right, we aren’t the ones who see the “return.” We don’t see the outcome, at least not long-term. I know that’s how it should be, but 18 years seems too short a time to adequately prepare your children for another 50, 60, 70+ more years of life. I think, as a parent, you wish you could see ahead to the end, make sure you’re doing the right things so that it will all turn out ok for your kids. Maybe if you knew what they’d come up against, you could better prepare them to face it. You do the best you can with what you’ve got, but you never really know if it’s good enough.

Am I really preparing Captain Science to be ready to face the world more or less on his own in only 7 or 8 more years? Am I teaching him enough? Instilling the right habits? Modeling the right kinds of friendships and other relationships? Loving him fiercely enough? He’s suddenly closer to being a man than he is to being that tiny baby I brought home 10 years ago.

How can any parent really be up to that task? How can we make them ready for adulthood? How can we make ourselves ready for their adulthoods? I guess we can’t–not really. We just have to try our damnedest to get them through one blink at a time.

Here’s a hint…he might just be turning 10 at 2:34pm today!

Captain Science is nine, and as anyone who has just completed Life of Fred: Fractions could easily tell you, 9 is 1/2 of 18. Eighteen! That rather arbitrary number indicates legal adulthood and we’re halfway there. In the same span of time it took him to reach the age he is now, he’ll be eligible to vote, to be drafted, to purchase cigarettes or lottery tickets, and to be completely legally responsible for all his own actions.

Of course, adulthood is much less concrete in actuality. Physically, he may well be man-sized at sixteen. Emotionally, he might not be ready to leave the nest at 18 (or he might be ready to fly earlier). If he never advances through lessons any faster than he has up to this point (a grade ahead), he’ll graduate at 16. Knowing Captain Science, though, there’s a good chance he could finish earlier than that. There’s also the simple fact that eighteen doesn’t really mean you’re done raising that kid. My parents continued to provide guidance, advise, and support (sometimes financial, sometime emotional) long after I turned 18. I lived with them for several years of my 20s while I was getting back on my feet after my divorce. Captain Science might leave home a happy, well adjusted college freshman at 17. We might have to pry him out of our basement with a crowbar in his late 20s.

Still, the idea of childhood being birth to 18 is firmly ingrained in my consciousness, and it’s hard to view 9 as anything other than Captain Science being halfway to that mythical land of Adulthood, where everything is finally Fair, and he can Have His Way, and do all the things he said he’d do when he became a Grown Up. My little nine pound baby is now nine years old. This is going way too fast.