Newly accessioned NLL–2026.014 Nadia Luong Living Library

In the Blink of an Eye

Nadia Luong

The days of early motherhood can feel endless until, suddenly, a child begins to move beyond the arms that once held them.

You grew up in the blink of an eye—

as if time, so careful with everything else, could not bear to move slowly with you.

One moment, you were placed into my arms— a quiet miracle, soft as breath, fragile as dawn,

and yet you carried a gravity that anchored my entire world.

Before you, I did not know how love could arrive so suddenly— or demand so much without ever asking.

The days were long then.

They stretched like unbroken horizons, filled with questions I did not know how to answer.

I moved through them half certain, half afraid,

learning you in the language of instinct— in the rhythm of your cries, in the stillness between them.

You needed me like the tide needs the moon—

completely, without hesitation, without doubt.

And in giving myself to you, I disappeared and became someone else entirely.

A mother— not born in a moment, but shaped in the quiet repetition of showing up, again and again and again.

Then time— so patient in the beginning— betrayed me.

It folded in on itself without warning.

The long days collapsed into fleeting years, and the years into something I can no longer hold.

And you— you rose from it all like something inevitable.

Stronger than I had prayed for. Braver than I had imagined. Carrying your own light into a world that no longer feels so large.

And slowly, so gently it almost felt merciful—

you let go of me.

Not all at once, not in a way that broke— but in the quiet way children become their own.

I used to believe those early days would last forever.

Now I understand they were never meant to stay—

they were passing through me, refining me, teaching me how to love without possession.

Because motherhood was never about holding on.

It was about becoming the place you could begin.

And now, as you walk forward into your own becoming,

I see it— not in the way you need me, but in the way you love, the way you stand, the way you carry yourself through the world.

Pieces of me— woven so deeply into you they no longer belong to me.

And that is the quiet truth no one tells you:

we do not raise children to keep them.

We raise them to become something greater than we ever were—

and to carry forward the love we once held in our arms.

And somehow, that is both the letting go and the miracle.

After reading the poem

The days of early motherhood can feel endless until, suddenly, a child begins to move beyond the arms that once held them. This poem traces the transformation from constant caregiving to loving without possession.

Distinction pairs

Being needed≠Being loved

Letting go≠Losing connection

Raising a child≠Keeping a child

Intellectual value

Through its changing sense of time, the poem explores attachment, parental identity, and a child’s growing autonomy. Independence emerges not as the loss of love, but as one of its lasting expressions.

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