Time Capsule

The last few days have been spent watching old videos of Joe-Henry as a baby. It's not that I was feeling particularly sentimental and sought it out. I just happened to be unpacking a box from storage, and ran across this one tape that had about three hours of our life from about five years ago. I plopped it in the vcr when he was eating breakfast, and when it was over it was time for lunch. We both were mesmerized.

There was our first apartment! There was our old condo, the first piece of real estate we were ever lucky enough to purchase with the generous aid of my in-laws! There were our friends, and their children as babies, and we all looked so young. I was so patient and focused and loving, so much more even tempered than the drill sergeant I seem to be today. And there was Joe-Henry, all eyes and cheeks and tummy, naming everything in sight, saying "Lalu" and generously giving slobbery kisses to anything that moved.

Watching it has made us both a little more loving with each other now, even as he tests me, even as I skirt the rapids of perimenopause. Oddly enough, it's made us both a bit more present. It's made me more aware than ever that this time is fleeting, and even though six is a far cry from two, it's also a far cry from twenty.

Right now, he's on the couch, freshly awake, wrapped in his train blanket playing "Prince of Persia" on his Dad's old cell phone. "MOM! I got the WHIP! Yay!!!"

Someday, in the not-so-distant future, that memory will make me just as gooey as "Lalu Mommy!"