A Picture of A Moment

I don't take enough pictures. I sometimes stop and stare at these children I bustle through life forgetting to enjoy.  I get them to school and get them home and get them fed and get them to bed so that they can get up again.  I get them to swim or baseball or T-ball.  Sometimes they get bathed.  I get them the occasional playdate. I push them to clean their rooms and put away their clothes.  I expect them to help in our house.  I want them to be responsible and capable when they are adults. (Oh and I just plain want the help!)  But when is our playdate?  When do we simply giggle and smile and play...

At times I freeze watching them and without a camera try to make my mind take a permanent photo.  Please let me remember this time for always I beg of my brain. And why not?  With the capacity of the human brain, why can't I have a picture file or a videofile?  Why are the stories I recall only 1 millionth of all that has been?  Is it because I would need to also equally remember the hurt, the sadness, the disappointments of a day?  Or worse the times I have failed or disappointed myself?  We rarely take photos of that...we want the feeling to leave.

Today my daughter did her hair.  Most days she quickly runs a brush  through her short, thin, off blond hair and lets it fall where it may.  But not today.  Today she had a new headband given to her by a friend of mine.  She placed it in her hair pulling the front piece out to hang down her cheek (entirely defeating the purpose of a headband, thus making it a true adornment).  She explained that she like it that way so that she could flip that piece out of her face from time to time with a head toss.  The head toss...you know the one often done by models and by cheerleaders in those movies where the geeks take over in the end finding their true place above the jocks and bimbos.

Well she performed her deliberate, yet subtle head toss, while I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and cut up apple slices to cover with cinnamon and sugar for lunches.  I was feeling like a great mom since I usually just toss the whole apple in the bag.  And she said, "Do you like it Mom?"  I nodded yes, perhaps I smiled.  I hope I did.  And I continued to make my super mom apples!!!  But in that moment I missed it.  I missed the moment where I should have taken her beautiful little face in my hands and told her just that. "You, my sweet, are stunning!"  How many seconds would that have taken?  Fewer than cutting up apples I bet.

So later when I see her I will.  I will grab her and tell her she is a true beauty.  She will smile a big bight smile and be warmed all the way through the way I was when my mom gave me that moment, that picture.  The one I keep imprinted in my brain.

I hope I am not too late to leave her a brain picture, and I hope I have not left myself with this one.