I Folded a Tiny School Jumper and Felt Time Hurt

Dear Delyara, It looked so small in my hands. Not baby-small. Just childhood-small. Enough to remind me that the body wearing it is growing even while I still think of it as mine to protect in ways time is already quietly withdrawing from me. I folded the jumper slowly. The kind of slow that happens when your hands are doing laundry but your heart is doing something else entirely. Parenting can be brutal like that. A school jumper, a shoe size, a hairbrush borrowed, a bedroom door shut a little more firmly than before — all these tiny moments that arrive looking ordinary and somehow still manage to bruise the heart. I put it away and stood there longer than I needed to. No one saw. That seems to be the shape of a lot of motherhood.