This Moment.

Jack is in the bathtub, wearing goggles. He’s calling to me with a voice so raspy that it feels like my heart is going to explode right out of my chest.

“Mama, watch this.”

I want to save this moment – this ordinary, everyday moment -forever. I want to bottle it up and revisit it over and over for eternity. How something so simple could fill me with so much love.

I feel that way a lot with him.

I also feel like I could absolutely explode at the thought of all I’ve seen from him in the last five years. The first time he called me mama, his first Valentine from a classmate. His personality developing, his sense of humor. How he went from rolling to crawling to walking to dancing, so much dancing.

If I had known all that was coming, would I have sped up to get to this moment?

I wonder if I could view myself through mother eyes if I would feel the same.

If I would have wanted to freeze time, sunburnt on the beach, young and carefree and light. Rushing home, driving my first car, trying to make curfew. Me and my brother, separated by just walls instead of hours. Staying up too late and laughing way too hard at dumb YouTube videos. Would I have wanted to freeze it?

And what if I knew what was coming?

If I knew I’d fall in love a few times, and not just romantically. That I’d fall in love with life, with towns, with writing, with friendships. That I’d get to be there when my childhood best friend got married. That one day I’d wake up and my life would change in the form of a positive pregnancy test. That I’d get to live in a high rise downtown, that I’d get to own a house. That I wouldn’t meet my best friends until my late 20s. That I’d become a person I really liked, a person I was proud of.

Would I have wanted to speed up?

And the bad stuff – anxiety and sleepless nights and heartbreak and losing people – would I have wanted to skip straight over all of that? Almost definitely.

I think that’s probably why we don’t get to choose. Why I’m glad we don’t get to choose. 

I most certainly would have frozen time years ago, choosing one happy moment and missing all the happiness that was waiting for me on the other side of hard things. I most certainly would have chosen to skip the hard things, missing all the beautiful things that grew out of that.

“Mama, watch this.” 

It’s been a hard week, but this moment is perfect.

If you’re in the middle of hard things, here’s a little reminder that you just may look back and find something beautiful in the midst of it. Hindsight is prettier, and all that.

I love you. Hang in there.  xo