The Fleeting Years: A Mother's Journal

Britta Santowski is a freelance writer in Victoria.

This overly ambitious journal chronicles more than nine years of Laura
Pratt’s life as a mother and introduces her four children, Kenya Lee,
Malindi Kia, Finn Thomas, and Kaikoura Grace.

The Fleeting Years covers much of the angst that will be familiar to
mothers and other parents, including interfering but well-intentioned
relatives, the abundance of Christmas, the first days of daycare and
school, and the expansiveness of a mother’s love.

Detailing nine years of motherhood in 72 entries spread thinly over 164
pages, the journal is jarring and abrupt. Consider the first five
entries (11 pages). Each one marks a significant occasion: Kenya’s
conception and birth; Kenya at 3 months; Kenya at 6 months; and Kenya at
one year. By page 50, the first three children are born. Whoa! Where did
the time go? Inexplicably, none of the entries in this journal are
dated, which adds to the reader’s disorientation.

Individually, Pratt’s journal entries are well written and give the
reader a glimpse into one day of life of one mother. Collectively, the
entries are too intermittent and they fail to capture the flow and truly
fleeting nature of day-to-day motherhood.