It's a cloud...no, it's a train!

Last week I got the rare opportunity of going to the park with just my two littlest Darlings. The big ones were scouting out possible garage sale hits with their Nana - one of their favorite things to do.

I don't know if it was because I had fewer people to keep up with, or if it was, as my precious philosophy professor put it, an "existential experience," but I had such a magical time with my Third Darling Little Man, pushing him on the swing at the park. How simple, but so complex in my heart that I hardly know how to write about it. I definitely can't write it without shedding unexplainable tears. How I pray that I will always be able to see him in my memory as he swings up and down, smiling up at me.

"Wat you think 'dat wook wike, Mama?" he asked on an up-swing, gazing at the clouds. I looked up at a plump cottony cloud. "I don't know...a crab?" I offered. "Noooo" he said as if I had intentionally tried to be funny, "it's a twain." Of course it is my little man.

In those few minutes we shared at the swing, surrounded by others playing tag or looking for frogs, I was struck by so many things...at how our lives really are like vapor, as I thought about how much he had grown. Does God create the stars out of little giggles like his? What was God thinking when he made such beautiful laughter? Will my Little Man ever really, really know how much I love him? As I sit here, literally with a lump in my throat, I realize what is so precious is that I was really with him.

I wasn't hurrying him up to get his shoes on. I wasn't asking him for the 9,438,342 time if he needed to go potty. I was just with him. For just a few moments, time did not exist, (and thank God Fourth Darling didn't wander off). It was just him and me. I was just in awe of the beauty of him as a creation of God. Oh, how beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. I realized just how much I'm not with him or the others: when tasks, school, housework and just plain selfishness keep me shuffling them along and not stopping to just be with them in their own little personhood. I'm going too fast.

I'm stopping now. I'm going to go snuggle with my firey little Second Darling as she goes to sleep. Perhaps time will stop again.