The difference a year makes

Years are odd things. They're not completely random lumps of time, what with being based on lunar cycles and planets going round suns and the tides and all that, but why 365 days should feel so different to 364 or 366 is an odd one.

Yet as my daughter is on the cusp of turning one I feel rather emotional about the whole thing. It's no coincidence I'm sure that today, as we geared up to say goodbye to her time being nought but not nothing, I had a terrible day, full of tearful encounters, silly clumsiness and general wobbles.

I'm thrilled too of course, as well as emotional, that she's made it this far, that we've made it this far, and that she's grown so much, in every sense. I celebrate her life every day, constantly in a state of gratitude (and fear) for her existence, but to share this joy with others on her birthday is extra special.

When it came to writing her birthday card all of this, it turned out, could be expressed in one short phrase that has always seemed rather quaint before. But in three words it sums up all that I want for my daughter - many happy returns.

Being a parent does change you

One of the compliments non parents often say about new parents is that "having a baby hasn't changed them". They mean it nicely - they mean you can still talk about things other than babies, that you manage to go to the occasional party, that you are still the kind of person they want to be friends with - but they are wrong. Becoming a parent does change you, absolutely and entirely.

It's not just that your responsibilities and priorities change, though they do. It's that something changes your very being to the core.

The experience of having a baby changes you physiologically and emotionally. You carry the weight of responsibility for another person, and a responsibility towards society to do a good job bringing up that person. But more than that, it changes your identity. However good or bad a job you do of it, the answer to whether or not you are a parent irreversibly changes and with it the way other people look at you and judge you and analyse who your are.

Your personality may stay the same, you may (if you are lucky) look the same. You may do the same job and read the same books and laugh at the same jokes, but fundamentally and profoundly who you are has changed. You are a different person. You are a parent and with that comes all the judgements and responsibilities we associate with that word as well as a sense of complete untouchability, for though you are vulnerable now in a way you have not been before you are also untouchable, for as long as your child is okay you know you will be okay.

So when people say "you haven't changed" it's not really a compliment, but it also cannot possibly be true. You have changed, utterly and completely, and so you should.

Related post: My baby, my daemon