Mile Markers of Growth & Change

Our little family spent last week away at the Oregon Coast. If you’ve never been there, especially during the early months of the year, it’s a rugged/cold/beautiful/rustic/often solitary place that lends itself to reflection and renewal. At times you could walk for miles without seeing anyone (and possibly seeing some deer) on the beach.

My wife and I wandered on the beach, dodging flotsam and jetsam washed ashore from the stormy seas. We watched our wee little daughter haltingly running after “doggies” she sees on the sand, and enjoying our brief moments of peace that come when you have an 18-month-old child.

There are so many ways we can measure & remember her growth — new words, new movements & expressions. New foods she likes (and plenty she hates), new animals she adores — and, finally, some new people she adores too. But we also noticed some things that, even at this young age, she has stopped doing. For instance, for the last several months when she was thirsty she would make a “ha! ha!” sound, as if she were asking her friend to check her breath before meeting some cute boy. She started this before she could really speak words, and we found it to be simply the most charming and endearing thing any child had ever done.

She doesn’t do it anymore — she’s moved on to a much more brusque and demanding, “CUP!” when she’s hungry.

Sometimes you can measure growth and change not by the new things you do, but the things you stop doing.

I’ve stopped finding joy in beating cars next to me off the line at a traffic light (not that my Mazda Protege stood much of a chance anyway).

The thought of a midnight trip to Taco Bell — once a rite of passage — gives me pre-emptive indigestion.

I take as much pleasure from a neatly trimmed and mowed lawn as I used to from a nice, long trip behind a ski boat… and the former doesn’t jerk my shoulder out of its socket, either.

I suppose I realized by watching my daughter on the beach that often our lives aren’t subtraction or addition necessarily — just replacement. Of priorities, of interests and of what makes us most happy.

So when you’re recording your own personal history or that of a loved one, be sure to pay attention not just to the Starts and Beginning To’s, but also the Finishes and Stopped Doing’s. And be sure to capture the cute “ha! ha!” moments before they’re lost to growth & change.