When you’re small, the idea of speeding up time is all you can think about. 

You dream of capturing the remote control for the family’s television and hitting the fast forward button, only to find that you have the sudden ability to skip ahead months or years into the future. 

You’ll jump to a time when you’ll finally be able to eat chocolate cake for breakfast, put your feet on the coffee table (with shoes still on), stay up until the sun rises and never do a single bit of homework ever again. 

You’ll be bigger, stronger, able to make your own decisions and be the one in control of your own life. 

I never found that remote control, but of late it has felt like someone hit the button for me, sending my life hurtling forward at breakneck speed. 

I ate chocolate cake for breakfast a week and a half ago just because it was there. I haven’t done homework since finishing my bachelor’s degree. 

I don’t actually have a coffee table anymore, but I’ve sat on the couch in recent weeks with my shoes still firmly on my feet. 

I’ve seen many a sunrise.

I’m that grown-up that a pint-sized version of me yearned to be. 

But as we drove away from my daughter’s college dorm this past weekend, my dreams were of a very different remote control, this one outfitted with a rewind button that would allow me to go back in time and repeat the past 18 years.  

Teething. 

Potty training. 

The terrible twos. 

The terrible threes. 

Deciphering “new math.”

Puberty. 

High school. 

I would take all of the hardest parts of parenting back in order to do it all over, to hold that tiny baby in my arms once more, to rock that toddler to sleep again, to spend Sunday afternoons watching that elementary schooler play soccer and weeknights reading them bedtime stories. 

Of course I can’t go back anymore than I once wished so desperately to go forward. 

I’m bigger now. I’m stronger. I’m able to make my own decisions. 

But there are still things I just can’t control.