I have a very bad habit of frequenting
Diane's Water Ice at lunchtime - good because I love every spoonful and bad
for...need I spell it out? Rachel, the
manager there most familiar with my obsession, and I have become chummy, sharing
stories about our kids like we're longtime friends.
She knows for example that I have a daughter
with Celiac Disease and how trying that can be, so she's been very patient with
me when I quiz her on Allison's flavor preferences to be sure she can still
partake. I know as well that she has a
daughter who seems to have grown from baby to "teenager" - at just 2
years old - overnight, and Rachel is not happy about it.
When she voiced sadness of time gone
by too fast, my emotions took me to a place I haven't visited for years - back
to the day when I experienced the magical powers of first-time motherhood.
I embraced it like a fish to water, loving
my new little companion Michael - the best interactive toy one could hope for -
and our time together brought joy, peace, satisfaction and endless fun to my
life. I got a kick out of everything he
did - from complete stillness as an infant to making sounds, moving around and
reacting to everything around him.
A short time after Mike was born, about
when he was starting to bring his hands around to his face and trying to grab
his feet, I began to feel the need to capture these fleeting moments on film, so
Mike's dad and I bought the hot item of the time (1987) - a shoulder-mount VHS
camcorder. I could hardly maneuver it
but that didn't stop me from recording hours and hours of Mike doing almost
nothing. I remember telling my then
in-laws when they came over one day that I have something amazing to show them,
and they sat down to watch with much anticipation. They oohed and ahhed very
kindly but I'm sure it was painful to sit and watch for over an hour Mike make ever
so slight a gesture. Yet, I found it
riveting.
So I get that Rachel is missing her teeny-weeny
baby.
I still miss all my babies.
Judy, for our generation, this is such an amusing post. So many of us have countless DVDs containing hours and hours of our children, especially during their infancy, doing simple little things that we were afraid to miss. We can relate so well to your story. I have good intentions to copy my old DVDs onto CDs before they get old and decay, but I also find myslelf wondering if I will ever watch the CDs; I sometimes wish there was a service out there that could edit them down to half the time with only the stuff worth watching being left in the end, LOL!
ReplyDeleteI know if anything were to happen to my children, who are now grown, I would pull them out and watch every single minute of those tapes, so I guess they are the memories we never want to lose. I have said before that if not for photos and videos, I seriously wonder if I could clearly remember my children's faces from when they were young; could you? And does that make me a bad mother????? Perhaps material for another blog. Celestine
I can't remember my OWN face from one day to the next!
DeleteHow timely was this post. My grandbabies are getting so big and older now, that lately I have been feeling sad at the loss of them as little tiny babies.
ReplyDelete