Shelf Life

My shoes were already on and I was walking purposefully to the front door when I encountered my crying six-year-old daughter, her bottom lip quivering, tears spilling down her cheeks, into her mouth and down her chin. I paused. "What is making you cry right now?" I asked her knowing she wouldn't be able to give me a complete answer. But with the way she was crying I knew I had to do something to calm her down. "What's wrong?" I asked again when she looked up at me with her huge blue eyes, the color amplified and deepened with the tears.  "Do you want Mom to hold you?"
"Yes."
With that, I knew my run would have to wait.

I scooped her up in my arms and walked into the front room, plopping down on the couch, to allow her to cry herself to satisfaction. I fingered her thick hair as her head rested on my chest, the weight of her body providing a calming weight to my own anxiety. It was going to be a busy day; I had to get going with my run or skip it all together in order keep everything else on schedule. But when I felt her little arms reach up around my neck and her body curl up against mine, all of that melted away. I closed my eyes, allowing my cheek to rest on the top of her little head, and reminded myself that this was one of those moments I would want back . . . again and again.

You see, my children are growing up--too quickly, in my opinion. It has now been six years (on the twelfth) since I had a baby. While I no longer feel the drive, that gnawing push maybe only women know, to have another baby, I do wish, nearly every day, to go back in time and rock my babies again. There are key moments from their early childhood I would give anything (almost) to go back and relive. But . . . I can't. No one can. All productivity would stop as people all over the world took time out to relive their favorite moments if this were a remote possibility.

The truth is, life, especially childhood, has a very short shelf life. If we don't pause to embrace key moments, to fully enjoy them and commit them to memory, we will end our days with regret. I did get to my run that morning, but only after my daughter heaved out her last tear, inhaled deeply, pushed off of my chest and said, "I love you." I don't regret that other things had to wait that day. But I do know that had I not taken the time to savor that moment and to commit it to memory, anything else I did that day would have been a waste.