They grow so fast!

With so much going back and forth from Prague I miss my baby and get a bit sentimental. For that or other reason every time I come back, even if I was out only for two days, I have the feeling he grew up.

I know. Unbelievable. Being a mother is behaving like never in History there was such a thing as a baby, like there is no available documentation about it, like a child is so rare as an alien smoking pipe in your living room. "They grow so fast! I look at his baby pictures and cannot recognize him. This T-shirt is already small. In three months!" Such things say the new mother to the bored listener. My friend, you know as well as I do, if you repeat "they grow up so fast" three times in front of the mirror, an old lady with apron and curlers will appear.

Now, if you are a serious writer, you can write the most obvious things in a somewhat more poetic way. I think I read in a book from Javier Marias about the feeling of seeing yourself in someone else's face. I remembered that feeling the last time I thought how fast he grows.

He grows, of course, but also his baby face is going away and those big blue eyes in that daddy's miniature body are looking at me in exactly the same way I look back at them. And it is in fact amazing. It is something unique in the whole universe, homemade alchemy. "He looks just like me!" That's what the new mother exclaims. "Awesome", answers the bored listener. 

Of course I have seen my face before in someone else's. But for some reason I do not get all excited when I realize my father has as horrible teeth as I do. Only mothers say "you look just like your sister" and "you have your granny's ears". It's a mother's thing that I know understand. Yes, I'm one step closer to the apron and curlers.

Mothers and aunties out there, tell me, what other obvious stuff is still to come? Please, spare me the embarrassment of calling my next posts "my baby looks just like me", "my child has too much energy" and "you'll know when you are a mum".