The age of five is magical for me. Each moment spent with my children before this age has been truly amazing too, but those moments I’d heard of before. I had been told that my baby’s first steps would make me cry, and they did. I had heard before that each wound would feel like a rip through my own skin, and it did. I had known that each smile would feel like my heart leap, and that the start of school would feel feel like my heart being pulled out of my body, and it sure did.

But the age of five has brought magic that I did not know existed. My tiny creature now resembles a grown-up, with almost a boyish charm that makes me stop in my tracks. What is right is clearly differentiated from the wrong, with no greys in between. I can predict a reaction, but in an unpredictable way. As my son clearly now has a personality of his own, I can imagine what kind of response I would get from him, but the vocabulary would almost always astonish me.

There is still innocence in those innumerable questions, but the universe of questions itself leave me baffled. My responses are measured as I help him navigate the world, but the grasping of the unspoken is meticulous.

They say I’ll miss the long nights when the baby has grown up, but it is this time capsule filled with wonder, that I would like to be travelling in for as long as I can.