How To Savor

I finally did it, posted that wrap for sale after thinking about it a half dozen times. Rosemary is a toddler now and as much as I love the beautiful wrap I bought before she was born, it had spent the winter sitting patiently in the linen closet, waiting to be worn. I wasn't using it, plain and simple, reaching instead for soft structured carriers that were quicker to put her up and down in at her every toddlerish whim.

I found a picture of the two of us wrapped up together and posted it for sale and, although I'm not a "stuff" person, my heart skipped a little at the sight of it. Her downy little newborn head. The way that carrier was one of the only things that soothed her crazy newborn colic. That wrap kept us held right together, held me together when those hard days with a hard baby seemed to stretch longer and longer before me. Seemed to, but didn't. Because here she is, big girl, shouting my name and hanging more and more in with her siblings and less and less close to my heart.

That's really how it goes. The days seem so long - so desperately long, the weeks an impossible race toward the weekend when Daddy is home and everything is right - but they aren't. I could rush right through a year with that attitude - and I have.

Savoring isn't in the stuff. It's not in keeping every dress she wore that summer in the sunshine or every toy he ever played with in a box in the basement. Folding up those tiny newborn clothes might make your heart catch a bit at the thought that he could ever be that small, but keeping it won't keep him that way. And you wouldn't want it to.

Savoring isn't about keeping them little, but keeping up with where they are now. Savoring this moment, these kids right now, knowing that tomorrow and the next day and the next - they will be someone else. You will be, too. The whole family shifting and changing as the days go on. Savoring is never about stopping time. It's about stopping yourself from rushing through it because time has got that bit covered.

So I sell the wrap to a friend who will make it a part of her story, knowing that keeping it folded up in the back of the linen closet won't stop time from marching on. I line them up, the pictures I have of the two of us tied together, and when she toddles by, I show her. Rosie is nearly 14 months and doesn't slow down for much these days, but she humors me with a little "ooooh." I squeeze her and tickle her and she wriggles to get down and run off with Peter.

I watch them go and I'm savoring her, him, this moment. Knowing it won't last and feeling, at least for now, at peace with that.

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