In the quiet of the very early morning when the house and it’s inhabitants are dreaming, my thoughts unravel from their tethers and wander.
Unable to sleep due to an I-won’t make-it-through-the-day-without-it afternoon coffee, I feel the heaviness of my body but the liveliness of my mind.
I have already read an entire novel since I came to bed. I stare at a large poster on the bedroom wall of my daughter, her head tilted at a poetic angle, her gaze focused on something in the distance.
She is already full of half a year’s worth of experience since I captured that moment. I am struck by the unfairness of time.
These are the times I most want to hold close, and yet they are slipping away with daily errands, busy-ness, my own fatigue. I picture her a teenager, a college grad, a young working woman, a wife, a mother, an old woman. I am already nostalgic for her youth.
Yet here it is for the taking, down the hall in sweet slumber. Please allow me to be able to receive this joy, to stop pushing it away. How is it that I’m missing what I already have right here?
(Note: I wrote this a couple weeks ago when I was in quite a different place. I feel like I now am much more able to appreciate these fleeting days with my sweet girl. What a difference sleep makes on my perspective.)
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