Epiphany

Tonight I had an epiphany.

It's something that is always not far from the front of my mind and after reading Jayne Kearney's beautiful blog post (@indydreaming on Twitter) 'A Backward Glance' I have been thinking a lot about 'looking back', or as I tend to do more often 'looking forward'.  Two mantras I used often when my children were tiny and I was trying to feed, settle and soothe them, were -

S/He won't be doing this when s/he's 21.
and
This won't last forever.

Often, almost every night in fact, as I gaze at my sleeping children I get emotional, sentimental, a tear in my eye as I wonder how they got to be so big.  I stand and wonder how I will feel when they're all grown up and my babies are all but gone.  But my epiphany (which came to me in the shower as most of my epiphanies do) is, I realized that I never, ever, as I look lovingly at them, wish they were back to being a baby, or smaller and littler and cuter than they are right now.  What they are at this moment is completely perfect, and I wouldn't want them any other way.  So then I realized that when they are bigger I'll be thinking the same thing, so I don't need to feel so sad.  The memories, the photos, the videos will be with us forever.  We can reminisce and enjoy them as part of our family history.   I'm not losing anything after all, I'm gaining more.  More time, more memories, more experiences, more cuddles, more conversations, more play, more fun, more outings, more of everything.

I love my little family of four.  It's perfect in every way.  Yesterday, today and tomorrow.