As Danica and Addy twirled in front of me and declared themselves
a rock band named D ‘n’ A, Addy asked me, “Mama, why did you just squeeze your
eyes closed?” A short while later, as Danica gushed about her plans to someday
visit Yew Nork, I squeezed my eyes closed again. A few days passed, and as I
heard both girls belly laughing from another room, I caught myself tightly
closing my eyes once again.
This eye-closing phenomenon isn’t from my pesky dry
eyes. It is something that happens each
time a tiny, but beautiful, memory is created. It is equal parts squeezing back my tears and trying my hardest to seal
a moment into the depths of my memory. Those depths are the banks I will draw
upon for my lifetime. For those
fractions of a second, the world shrinks to just us. The stack of dirty dishes
disappears. The toys scattered throughout the room no longer matter. The
deadlines and schedules and daily routines cease to exist for those milliseconds.
And in place of those mundane symptoms of parenting, all that is left are the fantastical
slices that matter.
Decades from now, when Mike and I sit alone in a quiet home,
I want to squeeze my eyes closed and relish in the memories of belly laughs,
mispronounced words, and my sweethearts loving life in ways only a child can
appreciate. When fast paces and busy routines turn into unrecognizable calm and
solitude, I hope I will have squeezed enough of the precious memories into that
reflective keepsake part of my brain. In those later years, I don’t want my
pride to come from my bank account, the size of my home, or a stellar work
attendance record. I want to know in my heart that I spent my life enjoying the
sprinkles of time of that mean the most.
