moments

My one year old walked a few steps for the first time this evening. I happened to be sitting on the floor with her at the time, and she stood up holding on to me, and let go, water bottle clutched for security in one hand. she took a few wobbly frankenstein-steps forward, beaming for all the world to see. i gasped & cheered and she collapsed and giggled.

I pulled out my phone, hoping she might do it again. i spent the next fifteen minutes or so futilely trying to capture the tiny miracle for posterity, but she vastly preferred coming right up in my face so there was no way i could get an angle in. oh, well.

so much for being in the moment. i sometimes wonder what our kids will think as they watch us fussing with technology rather than just being present. i think there's a feeling ( at least for me) of inherent distrust in my ability to remember, and if i dont remember, then what happens to all of these moments?! where do they go? what makes them matter? kind of a frantic, frenzied grasping at things, trying to make them just stay, darn it.

my 8 yr old's painting teacher had invited us to hang out in her backyard this morning and she described how she had laboriously and lovingly built up the garden piece by piece over many years. and that now she sits on a moonlit night and just is.

i had sent an email to my friend this afternoon describing my morning of, rather than being in the moment and connecting to my children, having: 

1. yelled at my 8 yr old for not remembering that the vav (hebrew) suffix means "his" 

2. yanked my 3 yr old bodily out of a sandbox with a threat to not let him play if he throws sand again (not going anywhere near the reason I knew he was doing it - the 5 yr old had beat him to a task: retrieving a toy from the bushes, that he had been dying to do, and a general sense of utter injustice that he is ALWAYS smaller.) 

3. refused to accompany the 3 yr old to the bathroom bc he was scared of monsters, bc it wasn't a "legitimate" request. but more bc i hadn't had coffee yet. 

4. ignored the 5 yr old in a weeping heap on the couch bc there was no food he wanted in the house. 

she replied that today she felt overwhelmed trying to balance her home/work energy ratio, coming up short and feeling guilty. i don't actually have a truly separate work piece in my equation (unless you count the homeschooling, which i think is deeply intertwined.) 

i wanted to send her a beam of zen, to somehow make her just be, wherever she is, and feel that it is enough. and have it reflected right back at me, and feel all warm and bathed in light. instead i sent her a virtual hug and just moved on, accepting that this is just how it feels sometimes. 

that even when we try in vain to muck up the breathtaking moments that life throws unexpectedly at us with a cellphone camera, they keep on coming. maybe i should take a lesson from my family up north who have been without power for nearly two weeks, and put the darned electronica away. give in to the utter impossibility of holding on to it all & just relax into it a little bit. maybe a goal to work on hopefully over my next decade. anyway, here's to moonlit nights and teetering exhilarating first steps.