I hope my children look back on today,
And see a Mother who had time to play!
Children grow up while you're not looking,
There'll be years ahead for cleaning and cooking,
So quiet now, cobwebs; dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep.
...Unknown Author
Aiden has been ravenous these past few weeks, so his mother reports. His little 21-month-old body can’t get enough. One morning recently, while entering his bedroom to get him up for the day, a little boy’s face greeted mother, where just a few days before the baby had been. The change in his features from baby to little boy was so profound; his mother could not keep her eyes from marking this day permanently in her memory. Upon dressing for the day, his clothing was suddenly too small. The arms and legs were well beyond the cuffs of shirt and hem of pants. The reason for the eating frenzy became quite evident.
Paulina’s mother is reporting in on her progress as well. It appears that she is able to sit up by herself for extended periods of time. While mother gives me updates, I can hear Paulina’s non-stop babble in the background, punctuated at times with little baby giggles. One evening the phone rings. “Can you hear that?” Paulina’s mother asks. I hear the sound of a tinkling piano in the background. Like her mother, Paulina, it appears, has an interest in the piano. Mother propped her in the baby seat up against the keyboard, and baby took to it immediately. This is not some random pounding of the keys. Her tiny fists push this key then that key in a deliberate manner. She also seems keenly aware that the keys just out of her reach to the left and right will also produce various sounds and reaches for these with effort.
As I listened to their stories, I wondered what has happened to the years and recalled the poem above. As a young girl, summer days would stretch interminably before me. I would whine to my own mother “there’s nothing to do!” When I became a mother, the days began to elude me. There never seemed enough time. I didn’t often heed the advice given in the poem above, and the days passed swiftly. Soon the children were grown.
The older I get the more swiftly the days seem to pass. My imagination views time as water flowing to the ocean. In my childhood, it was a meandering brook. As a young adult, the current moved swiftly along. Now, the river has reached the rapids. The kayak of life nearly snatched from my control. Before the rapids reach the falls, I feel it necessary to find a new poem to use as my own snapshot in time. The one below seems suitable.
These children
with their red apple cheeks
and runny noses
fill my heart to the brim!
They frolic like puppies
turning end over end
again and again and again.
How innocent and clever
their eyes are...full of love
for Grandma and
her cookie jar.
They joyfully exclaim
throwing their arms open wide
when I arrive
and
give exquisitely sweet
kisses and hugs and waves
goodbye.
My oh my oh my !
Grandma's eyes are never dry!
~ Martha Meshberg ~
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