Moments.*

These are the moments...

 

...the moments I want to hold onto.  Those quiet moments.  The noisy moments.  The ones where we cuddle and keep and pray and read and sleep and be.  Moments where life, yes life, is lived... breathing, laughing, soft tears crying.  Close. So close.

Moments that mark.  Moments that dwindle.  Moments that whisper and sit on a shelf dusted when old photo boxes, trinket boxes, tucked away treasures reveal.  Vivid, blurred, fading, fast.

The moments of life, the ones that echo, when standing in the distance, running but nowhere.  'Then' gets farther, tomorrow gets closer.  Good-byes, soft sighs, more tears and trembling and wondering... wondering how.  How do I live without.  How did I ever think I could.  Years trickle by, like the ripples on a pond when a soft breeze blows.  What was life with?  Without?  With... it all streams together and you wonder.  Wonder when you will blink and all...all of it is gone.

So today.  These days.  When I linger longer in the soft cushions of our old warn couch... the cushions which have held many babes, dried many tears, endured many bounces, spills, and splatters... if I linger there with warm bodies pressed closely around, voices drifting in and out of words from Tolkien or Alcott or Virtues long forgotten.  It is because these moments, these ones that are trickling by on that pond of life, these are the only real ones.  The ones that matter and last and live.

If, today.  This day, you find me bent over a rolling pin, a flour splattered, paint splattered, worn out table making biscuits or pies or things that linger in the senses.  Standing there longer than I should.  Longer than I could.  Standing and moving and swaying with the rhythm of a kitchen and chatter and sharing and clatter.  It is because these times are but a blink, a drifting, a fleeting, a sensation that will sift through the generations to 'remember when' and 'wasn't that wonderful'.

If now.  Right now, I slide away from the keyboard more to listen more to the voices and the noises and the din which is youth.  The din that some days hurts my heart and others lights my life.  The din that rises with a.m. and Bibles and buzzing around dishes and sets only when the last goodnight kiss and hug, one-more-hug, blinks dark... it is to say, when a spider web head wonders and wanders and still glimpses and remembers, yes, even the chaos was grand.

In the love and loss and life gone by, the memories fading, the people fading, the process of old and then and now which has settled in the midst of my heart and those I hold dear I stand firm in LIFE in now and know... for them it was a blink... for me it is a blink and only a blink more until tomorrow is today and today fades away.

Be blessed in the moments that are.  No matter how up or down or in or out.  They will pass, both good and bad and they will be longed for and missed, forgotten and wished.  Each.and.every.one. It is the path we have chosen, the path we are walking, the path which is Lit and Lived and Led which leads us Home.