From Crib to College, It’s Over in a Flash

I have never been one of those mothers easily moved to reminiscing at the sight of a baby. I enjoyed my daughters’ infancies--the sweet smells and smiles, the coos and cries, the discovery each day of some new delight.

But three trips through babyhood satisfied my cravings enough that since then I have been content to cuddle a baby, then hand the bundle back to mom or dad.

So I wasn’t expecting to wind up wistful after spending four days last month with my infant nephew, whose every smile and gurgle recalled for me the early days of mothering and their sweet simplicity.

And I wasn’t prepared for the discovery that looking back can make looking ahead that much tougher. Now I’m overloaded with memories that make it painfully bittersweet to rise to the latest challenge of mothering--preparing my oldest child to leave home.

My girls and I went to Northern California on a dual mission last month. We wanted to get to know 4-month-old Everett, the newest member of our extended family. And we planned to tour local universities for my oldest daughter, who’ll be heading to college next year. But something about that juxtaposition amped up the emotional wallop unexpectedly for me.

It’s not just that the baby resembles my daughter as she looked 16 years ago--big, dark eyes; chubby cheeks; spit dribbling from a mouth always ready to grin.

It’s that he reminds me of the relentless march of time, which remakes us as it changes our children; and how they fill, then vanish, from our lives.

The last time we saw this baby, he did little more than eat and sleep. Now he grabs our fingers, sucks on his toes, laughs at our antics, bounces to music on TV. His once-flailing fists can grip a rattle or hold a bottle. When he smiles, we can see the white nubs of emerging teeth.

My daughters marvel at how he’s grown, how much different he looks, how much more sociable he’s become. I notice something else--that he has learned to recognize his mother. His face lights up at the sight of her or the sound of her voice; his body stiffens, his arms get to waving, he calls out to her with gurgles and laughs.

I remember when I had that power, when my mere presence was enough to set my babies’ world right. Now my firstborn lounges in the next room, oblivious to me, sorting through brochures from the colleges we plan to see. She studies student profiles and campus photos, trying to find her own reflection, not in her mother’s eyes this time, but in a world away from me.

Friends who have traveled this route and sent their children off to college urge me to think of it as an adventure, a chance to see my daughter through new eyes, to regard her as an emerging adult. We will be partners in making a decision that will help chart the course of her life.

I try to keep this in mind as we pull onto the first campus on our list. She is heading toward independence, but that does not mean my job is done. “Go on ahead,” I tell her. “I’ll park the car.” I see the tour group forming in the distance. As usual, I have made her late. She likes to be early; I’m always running behind.

She slams the door and heads off to join them, a dozen prospects and their families massed around a perky young woman whose voice is not loud enough to rise over the din of cars and construction. The teenagers move closer; perhaps to hear, or maybe to assert their independence by distancing themselves from moms and dads. They discreetly check out one another and pose questions we wouldn’t think to ask--about dorm food and off-campus nightspots and whether the students here are really as stuck-up as everyone says.

And the parents study not only dorms and classrooms, but the faces and voices and body language of children about to step out on their own. I get the feeling that the question they’d most like answered is the same one I am pondering, as I push a stroller with a sleeping baby behind a daughter who seems suddenly grown.

How did we get from there to here so fast?

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Sandy Banks’ column is published Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.