Life does not drift by. It does not fly. It soars.
I've had that song 100 years in my head all day, by Five for Fighting. That guy is good! I think it's because I've been corresponding with some old SWCS friends who I haven't seen in forever and thinking about how fragile and quick it all is.
Thomas Moore said "The soul delights in an extended sense of time." I can feel that's true. And so, to slow things down a bit, I'm catching a few of my own memories:
Today at lunch Helen said: "Mom, remember in the little house on St. Patrick's Day you put green food coloring in the milk and Joanie wouldn't drink it?" She remembers everything. And I'm so glad she does 'cause I would not have remembered that.
Last week with her first taste of a fresh Basil leaf, a wide-eyed Joan remarked: "mmmmmm ... it tastes like jelly beans!"
I also want to always remeber this small, but frequent conversation we had at meal time in the little house (H=5, J=3) I went just like this:
H: "Mmmm, num, num, num, num"
J: "Bop a no"
H: "Can you not say bop-a-no?"
J: "I will say bop-a-no."
I need to document this stuff. My life with them ... together. This simple, small unique stuff that only they would think, do or say.
Anna Quindlen phrased it so eloquently when she wrote: "...but the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three on them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."
Write it, picture it, preserve it.
