an emergency

Still that heaven scent on her skin, and I pull her close and whisper right into her. Whisper into her the meaning of life, the one thing she needs to know before she’s as old as I am. Before she has messed up as much as I have... Moments, I tell her this... Moments, this is all we have. 

Microscopic, fleeting moments. 

Her eyelashes flutter in dreams and I wonder, how many moments of my life have my eyes been wide open but I’ve been rushing, racing, sleeping right through? How many of the popsicle days and the run and twirl and spin days? How many moments of melting ice cream, crazy laughter and dangling bare feet days…  The setting sun igniting the wonder of now. 

Someone, wake me up to the beating of wings, the splashing of water, and the setting of fog at twilight. The way the leaves and the childhood slip away in the woods, torched with the last light of summer. I want to tell her this, “You have got to figure out a way to stay fully awake.” Time is blurring by and everyone is slipping past.

How do we wake to the moments? How do we stop living like life is an emergency, something to be sped wildly through?

 Life is not an emergency.

How do we start believing that life can be carried only in the hands of the unhurried? A bubble, held in awe. How do we stop wolfing life down? It is our only dessert. Too sweet, too brief, too delectable to hurry through… To live like a boy I once knew. To pause between bites to wiggle his one lose tooth and whisper, “I love you, mom.”

The earth under you and the stars spinning all around you. This is for you. Your true love’s smile, a nap in a patch of light, the whir of bike spokes, and that one great puff of flickering candles. What if we really figured it out? The gratitude for the seemingly small and significant. Because this is how you spend your one life well. Receiving each moment for what it really is: holy, ordinary, amazing grace, a gift.

I didn't write this, but I believe it. This expresses my heart to children. Slow down and hold on to the innocence that fills your eyes with light.