The Era of "Banana"

What parents say about time is true

Today, as I was putting my almost 3 1/2-year-old to bed, he said the word “banana.”

I don’t mean that this was the first time that he recognized the elongated yellow fruit that looks like a you-know-what and was able to name it. I mean that it was the first time that he pronounced the word “banana” correctly.

There’s something really odd and beautiful about experiencing your child literally aging and maturing in this way.

I know that I have been on this journey with my son since the day he made his way down my vaginal canal, but I—like many parents—have found that it is very, very true that “the days are long, but the years are short.”

I don’t remember all of the specific details about my kiddo growing up. I don’t know if he grew .001 centimeters overnight yesterday or the day before. I don’t know if he ate green peas for the first time last month or last year. Yes, we keep track of key moments and milestones in our child’s life, but eventually, not every moment feels like a milestone.

Sometimes, we go about our days and weeks and months with our child saying “badanana” and then, all of a sudden, it’s “banana.”

This kind of passage of time is something that I am currently experiencing very acutely. It’s like, when they are an infant, every little thing is a Big Deal.

Getting our first haircut is a Big Deal. Meeting our aunt, who lives halfway across the country for the first time on our birthday because you were born during the pandemic, is a Big Deal. Having our first ear infection is a Big Deal (even if a painful one).

But our seventh haircut? Our fourth ear infection in three months? Not really a Big Deal. (Well, okay, the last one actually is because it’s when your pediatrician can refer you to an ENT if you’re interested in ear tubes.)

So many things become Not a Big Deal once your kid is old enough to have had quite a few life experiences. Maybe not 37 years worth of life experiences, but a pretty decent amount during his short but more-than-a-few-years worth of life experiences.

So I didn’t think about how his next Big Deal life experience might be graduating from cutely mispronouncing the word “banana” (his favorite fruit) for his entire life—starting out with “yaya” to the current “badanana.'“

(Note: I intentionally left the adjective “current” in front of “badanana,” despite my writing earlier in the article that he started saying “banana” as of last night. I accidentally wrote it as “current,” and it felt apt to leave this tidbit in since it demonstrates precisely the struggles with time we parents face.)

But that’s exactly what happened tonight.

In fact, it technically happened last night, when he pronounced the word “banana” while we were reading his favorite bedtime book, Goodnight Gorilla, but when I asked him what he said, what that was called, he said, “badanana.” I naively let it go, thinking that it was just a fluke. Thinking that he’s still my little baby who points to the “badanana” on every page.

Yet, despite my ignoring this Big Deal for one night, here it is again.

Time is telling me that it is marching on and reminding me that some days it feels like nothing is happening and nothing will ever happen again. And other days, I go to bed trying not to cry about my baby’s vocabulary improving.

Again, that whole “the days are long but the years are short” thing is hitting me hard.

The last time I felt this way was during the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.

I don’t want to get all nostalgic about that time (because that’s very much not quite the feeling) but I do want to say that, before you know it, we’ll be there again. Already, many things are happening. Candidates are announced, debates are starting, the news cycle is doing its thing…

So before you know it, we might once again be faced with the Big Deal of telling our baby that the second (or third or first or whatever) U.S. presidential election resulted in half the country voting for someone who has so many criminal indictments that there’s literally a CNN page tracking them all because ain’t no one can keep track of that absurdity. Or a sane person.

(Note: I’m assuming y’all know which side I lean. In which case, goodbye to those who unsubscribed cause they vehemently disagree. I would do the same. For those who are with me and those who aren’t sure, at the very least start by heading to VOTE.GOV to register to vote next year.)

Time is so weird, isn’t it?

But as my family says goodbye to “badanana” and those of us who live in the northern hemisphere say goodbye to summer, I want to leave you with this:

What will be your next Big Deal?

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Talk soon,
Irina (she/her) - raising a March 2020 gen alpha kid