I don't remember the last time I carried my son, the youngest of my six children. He was probably five; could have been six. Probably had to do with rudely foul weather and rushing the two of us from one sheltered area to another (perhaps our car). Or maybe I just carried him to bed.
I can't recall.
Hoisting and hugging and lugging my son was something I'd done many times a week since his infancy, decreasing, predictably, with each passing year, but taken for granted as a reliable feature of quotidian life, a thing I simply did, regularly and routinely, and would go on doing.
Only, I didn't.
I picked him up, that distant day, and carried him from some point A to some point B for some now indeterminate reason. And then I put him down and that was that. I was all done carrying my son and didn't know it.
It's a good thing, though, I'm thinking. We'd die too much inside should little unknown endings like these be recognized for what they are.
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well said - thanks for making me cry at work. How nice, though, that some small part of our psyche manages to store that beautiful memory away, only to allow us to one day revitalize something in our hearts that will now keep that thought as a loving reminiscence that will never die.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember the last time I tucked Wade into bed....
ReplyDeleteI don't remember the last time I read Rachel a bedtime story...
I don't remember the last time Rachel said her habitual good night of "I love you, Mommy. I'm glad you're here."
Sweet, small moments that loom large in our lives many times over, if we are so fortunate.
ReplyDelete