Motherhood has been full of surprises. 

For instance, since having children, I’ve become a crier. I’ve come to understand why sleep deprivation is a form of torture. I’ve been astounded by how much of myself I have had to face while learning how to parent another human being. Little did I realize that having children would forever alter my perception of the world – from the intricate patterns of tree branches, to the shapes in the clouds, to the colors of a sunset.

And there are plenty more. But there’s one surprise that crept up on me, unspoken and unanticipated: the secret superpower of maternal mental time travel.

Mothers seem to possess a special talent for traversing time in our minds, effortlessly leaping forward or backward in time at the sight of a sock, the smell of a certain food, the touch of a hand, the sound of a song or a familiar voice. At the slightest sensory input, we are transported to real moments in the past, to possible moments in the future, and then back again to the present moment.

Propelled by our bonds with another human who changes and evolves nearly every day, we are transported – sometimes gradually and gently, and other times at whiplash speed – to cherished memories from the past or to future moments we hope to see.

Coined by Thomas Suddendorf and Michael Corballis, “mental time travel” refers to the ability to mentally reconstruct personal events from the past and construct potential events in the future. Suddendorf and Corballis, along with many other psychologists,  have posited that the ability to mentally time travel is one of the essential traits that separates humans from animals. Some go so far as to say that mental time travel lies at the very heart of human consciousness. In other words, mental time travel is a generally human characteristic – most of us travel in time in our minds. 

That said, I’ve come to believe that mothers are more frequent time-travelers than most. Propelled by our bonds with another human who changes and evolves nearly every day, we are transported – sometimes gradually and gently, and other times at whiplash speed – to cherished memories from the past or to future moments we hope to see. With each imaginary trip we experience a myriad of feelings, from nostalgia and fear, to amusement and delight, to anticipation and hope. 

It is our children, of course, and the things that pertain to them, that are our Mandalorians.

We can find a child’s tiny sock, and in a flash, we remember a time years ago when they wore it on a walk to the park. It was sunny and hot, and they kicked it off, and we had to double back to pick it up. We experience a wave of sadness that they are so much bigger now and that their tiny, simple newborn phase will never come again; immediately followed by an ocean of gratitude that they are healthy enough to have outgrown that miniature sock. 

In the parking lot of the grocery store, we grab a little hand and are carried back to a time when they held our hand in a different parking lot, and their fingers were so much smaller, and they looked up at us mid-stride and said, “I love you soooooooo much Mama.” Then we squeeze their hand just a little tighter because we can suddenly envision them in the future, not wanting or needing to hold our hand in the parking lot any longer. 

We will be up to our elbows in bubbles while bathing kids in the bathtub, and suddenly in our minds, we are walking through that same house, with other people’s stuff in it because it wasn’t yet ours, talking about how we really wanted a bathtub because God-willing we would bathe our future children in it. And there we are actually living that dream, and we feel so lucky that we get tears in our eyes mid-lather. 

One night the children come downstairs to kiss us goodnight and then put themselves to bed. We smile at their confidence and how tall they have gotten as they saunter off to their rooms. And then just for a moment, we are filled with a little bit of nostalgia as we mentally relive the bedtime routines of the past, the hours of lying with them for stories, songs, and snuggles that they don’t need anymore to be able to drift off to sleep. 

Amidst our frequent time-travel there are also moments where time seems to suspend itself: while cradling a newborn; as we listen to one of our children, fresh out of the bath, telling knock-knock jokes in their pajamas; while we sing Happy Birthday out of tune and watch them blow candles out on a cake; while they sit on the porch and talk to us, really talk to us. Time seems to stand still as we are enveloped with pure, unadulterated joy and awe. 

Our ability to travel in time doesn’t always feel glorious. Time comes to a halt while we sit on the bathroom floor in the middle of potty training, and the minutes seem to last hours, and we imagine a year from now when thank goodness this phase will be over. While consoling a child through their first big disappointment or heartbreak, we hug them tight and fight back our own tears and tell them it won’t feel like this forever, and we recall a day we hugged them after a friend pushed them at the park, and gosh the solutions were so much less complicated back then. Times like these make us wish for a split-second that either time would pass more quickly or that it wouldn’t, and we feel guilty that we can’t just be content to be where we are, because we know what we have.

While mental time travel is a universal human trait, mothers must have platinum status with unlimited access to all the lounges, upgrades, and perks.

The more experience we gain as mothers, the more we start to anticipate the inevitable end of certain phases, some of which seem to drag on interminably, and others that seem to be gone in no time at all. We start to wonder if this is the last time we are ever going to pick them up, or give them a bubble bath, or lie in bed with them. Maybe it’s their last game, their last performance, their final night at home. We live in the present wondering quietly if, or counting the days until, something so habitual and routine is about to become the past forever. We are always keeping an eye out for glimpses of our children’s future selves, which only brings who they are right now into sharper relief. 

Every now and then, a perfect stranger will initiate our flight’s take-off. An older woman will smile at us in the middle of some exhausting task and say, “Oh, I remember those days!” as they embark on their own mental journey. When they’ve walked away, we imagine ourselves in the future as the perfect stranger who has survived or thrived in whatever it is we have been doing, and turns and says to a younger mother,  “Oh, I remember those days!” And then one day, in the blink of an eye, it is us. 

While mental time travel is a universal human trait, mothers must have platinum status with unlimited access to all the lounges, upgrades, and perks. The bonds we share with our children – physical, emotional, spiritual – fuel our travel across time, to moments we have lived with them, and to potential moments we hope they will experience. Children learn, grow, and change so quickly that we mothers are constantly confronted with the fact that time is elapsing, that we are each living our one life right now. We can’t help but possess a hyper-awareness of time and the relationship between the past, the present, and the future.

Mental time travel is how we adapt to the complex, ever-changing environment of motherhood, and more broadly, to life in general. Remembering the past helps us to recognize what we know. Drawing on our past experiences and present hopes and fears enables us to imagine new possibilities. Both reminiscing about the past and envisioning the future help us to reframe the present. But it’s more: maternal mental time travel is also an expression of motherly love, a love that transcends time itself, enabling us to cherish our children not only in the present moment but also in memories of the past and in dreams for the future. 

When I became a mother, I found all this mental time travel astounding. It’s occasionally unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and at times exhausting. But these journeys of the mind, with all their secret layers and sacred moments, their surprises and challenges, ultimately embody the very essence of motherhood: a love for our children that cannot be bound by time and space, for it is timeless, eternal, unending, forever. And to anyone who’s experienced the boundless love of a mother, that is no surprise at all.

It’s Monday, December 20, and I am exhausted. My youngest child, 17 months old, is snuggled tightly against my breast while I rock her and sing to her before laying her in her crib to sleep.

Because it is near Christmas, I decide to sing “Silent Night.” She places her tiny hand on my throat to feel the vibrations of the notes as they leave my vocal cords. As an alto (though my college voice professor would disagree) the range is my most comfortable. I sing a few verses, then start over because I don’t know any more.

As I reprise the first verse, tears creep to the edges of my eyes. It will be the last Christmas I’ll rock one of my babies. Next year, the baby I’m now rocking will be 2.5, and given her fierce independence, I doubt by then she’ll let me.

I lend my focus to the words of the carol.

Silent night, holy night. 

All is calm, all is bright. 

This rocking chair is the place where I rocked my very first baby five years ago, where I struggled and settled my way into motherhood. Its worn, nubby fabric cradled me in the hundreds of sacred hours of feeding, comforting, and bonding with the tiny soul I had created.  

Round yon virgin, mother and child. 

Holy infant, so tender and mild. 

My first baby grew, and then came the second. Same chair, different house; same motions, a few new songs, a more seasoned mother. Then he, too, grew. I can’t believe after all that time, I couldn’t tell you the last day I rocked each of the boys. Maybe I wasn’t focused on it because I knew (hoped) we’d have one more.

And finally the third, our daughter. We haven’t had our final rock together yet, though I know it, too, will come. In the midst of sleep deprivation from teething, the stress of the holidays, and other things happening in our lives, I have often found myself longing for this last baby to be a bit older, just so I could rest at night a bit more.

And then, this night of December 20 whispered tenderly: Dear Mother, these might not be silent nights, but they are holy nights.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Sleep in heavenly peace. 

I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a new bathing suit.

It was sort of about not wanting to spend the money on myself. But mostly not.

It was really about wanting to wait until I felt worthy of buying a new bathing suit.

As I write this, I have a four-year-old, three-year-old, and ten month old., and my body shows it. I am still 15-20 lbs – I mean, let’s just go ahead and say 20 lbs – heavier than I was before I got pregnant with my third. With the other two, by this point I was more or less back to (my new) normal. Not this time. Exhaustion, tortilla chips at 10 pm, exclusively breastfeeding and putting myself last are the main culprits. My body is wider and softer than ever.

Summer was approaching, and I wanted to take the kids to the beach. I dreaded the thought of it because what on earth would I wear to play in the sand and jump in the waves? I wanted to take them swimming after months of slogging back and forth to swim lessons, but how could I get in the pool with no swim clothes to wear?

So, I googled things like “postpartum swimsuit” and several hours of research and hemming and hawing later, I purchased three to try and kept one that I didn’t completely hate.

Deep breath. I have something to wear that fits my body right now. It’s ok.

It turns out the world didn’t crumble when I bought I swimsuit that didn’t fit the body I wished I had, but rather the one I was living in now. (Imagine that.)

On Mother’s Day, we decided to take the kids to the beach. We threw together towels, toys, and snacks and I went to get myself ready. It felt nice to put something on that fit around my curves. This will do, I thought. Deep breath.

At the beach, the kids had a blast. Everything was covered in sand and I chased my fearless 10 month old around the beach blanket and to the very edge where the waves just barely kissed the sand. It was a messy but truly wonderful beach trip, punctuated by me feeling my body in a swimsuit and not loving it.

I could see the weirdness of it all as it played out in front of me. I felt my heart nearly burst while watching my three babies and my beautiful partner play in the sand, while also being uncomfortable in my body, while also wondering how can I possibly let my body keep me from enjoying the beauty of these gifts?

Toward the end of the stay, I sat damp and sandy-bottomed with my family, took another deep breath of salty air, and told myself: They will remember that Mom took them to the beach, that she played with them in the sand, and watched them jump in the waves. That is what matters most.

I will remember my babies at one of my favorite places in the world, squealing with joy and giddy with ideas for sand structures. I’ll never forget how much my babiest baby loved her first time in the sand and waves. That matters, too.

To be candid, when I look at the photos of that day I will probably also remember the million little battles I fought to get the bathing suit I wore that day, to put it on, and to feel my body in it while we scooped and ran and splashed.

But I will also feel pride because I will remember that I loved my family and myself enough to take the body I had, to play with the family it created, to live out a day I had once only dreamed of.