Reverie from a forgotten manilla folder

Notes.

OK--I finally want to write this down.

It's a thing that every parent feels I think. It's something not easily captured with words. But we've all felt it—maybe the same way you sense a quick changing of shadows in a sunlit room, with sun & wind & clouds & swaying branches outside the windows. You can't explain what happened—somewhat startled that something has shifted—did someone just walk by?—a deer?—was it outside? Oh of course: just a shadow shifting. That's how this is—you breathe it in, deep, you close your eyes as you hug your child, that fine head of hair against your cheek. You keep your eyes closed & wish you had the words for it all, for the quick bittersweet heartache & thrill that just passed—the quick shift of the heart.

I just want to pull it all in, I’ve felt it with each of my kids: the smell of the hair, the smallness of form, the promise of her life, the thrill of his days now. He’s in my arms now, I lay on my back amid the strewn toys. She's asleep in my arms, the nightly news show drones on as l enfold her and sense again the whirl of days. The small fears, the tiny cries, the high chatter of pure delight in life—you want to save this, secure it, bottle it, keep it in a safe place somehow, safer than synapsed memory, too soon grown dim. You hear “they grow like weeds”—one on the way to France, to college, to businesses, to factories, to apartments and dorms and homes far from this home, to lives beyond this life. You want that. You want growth and life, and weep should it he denied you or others. Who should want to fawn over a seedling and deny that growth, that full stature, that fullness of life? And so I’ve kept my eyes as chroniclers, my hands the surveyors of blessing, with touch & kiss & loving words to document the sparkle in those eyes, their tears & laughter through these days and nights together. And I want to vouchsafe these records as praises to a God of love, to keep safe & remembered forever, now and far beyond the coursing of blood, the pulsing of my heart, the refraction of light in my eyes.

--Summer, 2001