Lots of moments to come
June 17, 2009 - A friend recently pointed me to a long-ago column on motherhood. It is written by Anna Quindlen and titled "On Being A Mom." In one passage, she writes:
"But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make... 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 of 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 such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."
Reading it, I was at once ashamed and validated. Ashamed to have let G's journal lag. Validated in the knowledge that I've been busy--living in those moments with him. However, since it is exactly that texture of life Quindlen refers to that motivates my pen (or keyboard)...it was the push I needed. A push to gather up my gazillion scraps of paper--each a thought or an image from months past. A push to cull my email correspondence and my (other) site content for shared joys and sorrows. And a push to just look into G's face and remember.
The end result is a chronological recap of all the experiences I failed to capture in G's journal--more than six months worth. And while I'm sure to have missed some of what Quindlen wishes for, the task of putting words to these experiences elicited plenty of memories and stirred more than one of my senses. Honestly, that's what I was about. Because, as many of you have commented, this journal is more mine than his.
Or written for me as much as it is for him.
As such, I didn't want to leave a single minute out...
"But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make... 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 of 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 such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."
Reading it, I was at once ashamed and validated. Ashamed to have let G's journal lag. Validated in the knowledge that I've been busy--living in those moments with him. However, since it is exactly that texture of life Quindlen refers to that motivates my pen (or keyboard)...it was the push I needed. A push to gather up my gazillion scraps of paper--each a thought or an image from months past. A push to cull my email correspondence and my (other) site content for shared joys and sorrows. And a push to just look into G's face and remember.
The end result is a chronological recap of all the experiences I failed to capture in G's journal--more than six months worth. And while I'm sure to have missed some of what Quindlen wishes for, the task of putting words to these experiences elicited plenty of memories and stirred more than one of my senses. Honestly, that's what I was about. Because, as many of you have commented, this journal is more mine than his.
Or written for me as much as it is for him.
As such, I didn't want to leave a single minute out...
posted by Jennifer B. | 6:20 PM
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