My Un-Pregnancy: Week 8

I have this memory from high school that changed the way I think about time. It was a Friday night and I was at an away football game with my dance team. I was wearing red and black plaid from head to toe (we were the Highlanders) and it was the first crisp night of fall. The band was playing, the crowd was cheering and my friends were laughing. It all sounds romantic now but at the time, it was just a Friday night. As I looked around though, taking it all in, I had the strangest feeling come over me. I knew standing there that all of it, the music, the air, the crunch of the uniforms as the football players tackled each other, all of it was temporary. Glorious and fleeting. So I began to savor moments.

I had one of those moments this morning when I woke up, the sun shining on what sort of feels like the first day of the rest of my life.

My last day at my full time job was Friday. I cried like a baby the whole way home because I feel like I'm going through some sort of breakup. But when I woke up this morning to Ada's happy noises coming from her crib beside me, I remembered why I've turned our lives upside down. Because these moments are temporary. Eventually, she'll stop scanning the room to find me. She won't light up just because I speak to her. She will lose those dimples on the backs of her hands and in her elbows. Eventually, she will stand at a football game or prom or graduation and realize for herself that time moves too quickly. And when she does, I want her to be able to look back on her childhood and know that even if I couldn't stop time, I taught her to savor it.

So, I'm off to fill up her baby pool and sit on the deck with some Jack Johnson tunes in the background and the love of my life beside me. Today is a day worth savoring.