Two days ago, on Easter Sunday, I hustled both of my girls in their adorable little dresses into Dunkin Donuts for an emergency coffee. Yes. An EMERGENCY COFFEE. It happens. An older couple were sitting at a table, and their eyes lit up at the sight of my two in their Easter finery. I knew it was coming.
"Oh! Just look at them! How beautiful they are! It seems like just yesterday that my girls were as small and taking them shopping for their Easter dresses was one of the highlights of my year. Enjoy every minute, it goes by so fast." She was teary eyed and smiling all at the same time.
It wasn't so much her words that got to me, but the emotion that was behind her words. As the mom of young children, she had probably had plenty of mornings similar to mine; out of coffee, screaming kids who didn't want to put tights on, husband stuck at work, and running two hours (oh yes) late. It happens to all of us. Those are the minutes that seem so endless and make being a mom feel like such a rat race sometimes.
But as the tears slid down her face, I looked at my girls through her eyes. I looked at my older daughter, beautiful and confident, shaking hands and saying "Pleased to meet you," to this woman and her husband. I looked at my younger daughter, her huge eyes and giant smile, so proud to be in a matching dress with her big sister, her idol.
Yes, this was one of those moments to cherish. But so were the other moments, the ones that I most definitely did not cherish at the time. The rat race moments. The mess moments. The tantrum moments. The tired moments.
The sleepless nights of having a newborn are already gone. I miss them. I would give anything to have those nights back, because I will never again have a teensy new soul snuggled up against my chest. And the other moments are fading fast, even as they still happen. The Cheerios all over the kitchen floor will be gone soon enough. The toddler tantrums will someday be a distant memory as a defiant pre-teen stares at me in some horrible tween store, and I will miss the day when my precious little munchkin was upset because she wanted her shirt off and on at the same time. And even that moment will some day make me wax nostalgic as I send my baby off to college and cry all that night because she is no longer under the safety of this roof and these arms.
So yes. Seize the moment. Seize every freaking moment and hug it until you truly appreciate it. Cherish the exhaustion. Cherish the mess. Cherish the tears. If you find you cannot, you have too much on your plate, and you need to find a way to clear your plate a bit. This may mean letting some housework go by the wayside, ordering pizza once a week, cutting back at work and quitting cable and Starbucks to make up for it. Do whatever you need to do to find a way to cherish those moments.
Someday you will be sitting alone on a holiday and you will wax nostalgic at two little girls in their Easter dresses and you will finally understand what that old lady meant, because you will be that old lady, not a cocky thirty something who thinks no one can understand how tough it is to be you. She knows. She was you fifty years ago.
I hear you! I have a gratitude practice specifically to keep me "present" with my kids. But I also really do relate to Glennon's original post. I think there is room in our lives to do both, and I think Glennon does cover the importance of treasuring times with the kids. But that moment in the grocery store with the kids screaming -- it's just not the right time to tell someone to carpe diem, you know? ;)
ReplyDelete