I have always prided myself on my great memory. I can recall* or piece together events long past by dredging up just a scrap of information.  My family always calls on me to figure out when things happened, or who was there (Well, it was summertime because I was wearing my jean shorts and I cut those jeans into shorts after watching Dirty Dancing, which I watched with T, so that must have been the summer after Grade 10…etc)

But my recall is starting to fail me and it is driving me nuts.  Don’t worry, I’m not experiencing a scary probably an illness memory loss, I just can’t remember as much of the details of my kids’ babyhoods as I would like.  I think the combination of unfamiliarity, sleep-deprivation, and kid-juggling has made my detail oriented recall fail me and I don’t like it.

I know I don’t NEED to remember everything, I certainly don’t care for the daily details of my own babyhood – a broad sketch is more than enough, but I want to remember more.  I have never been more acutely aware of the passing of time than I have since the boys arrived, and I know I can never have those ages back – I will never again have a newborn and a three year old, I will never again have a child in grade two and another months away from kindergarten.  I want to freeze each moment in time and save it to visit later.

And like I’ve said before, it’s not just the way things look or the things the kids say that I want to save (although I want all them too) – it’s the feeling of little arms around my neck, the way a soft cheek presses against mine, the lovely physicality of this stage of mothering, the same physicality that can be overwhelming – those intangibles, that I want to fold in wax paper and press between the pages of a book.

It makes me sad just to think about it, knowing that I will probably forget today, and that yesterday is already partially gone.  Perhaps ina few years the boys will be filling me in on their early childhood “Well, I was wearing my spiderman shirt with the long sleeves, so that must have been when I was four…”

*I know that you change a memory everytime you dig it out of your brain, I believe that the core, and at least some of the feelings are accurate.

 

PS – Sorry for the radio silence,  we were getting some house repairs done and computer time was at a premium.