My own mom, she-who-raised-nine-children, turned 90 this month. When you say 90 is sounds like a lot. But when you say 9 x 10 years it doesn't really sound like very much at all. I mean, look at how fast the last 10 years have gone. And the 10 years before that! And how is it that in some ways I still feel like a little family starting out and at the same time there are college catalogs arriving daily for my eldest? In the words of my mom, and someone else who said it first, "Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like bananas." Which to me means, you can try to make it sense of it all and make sense of our time here on earth but really, it's hard. So when we can't make sense, at least we can take notice.
If you don't believe me that time flies and that things are always changing, I offer the photo here as proof.
This is my mom on the streets of NYC in 1926. I think it's Mulberry Street, the street where she was born. See the wicker pram? The cinder streets? The boys playing stickball in knickers? Time does fly. This was only 9 x 10 years ago. And rest assured things look a little different there now. My mom is still here 9 x 10 years later, but just about everything around her has changed.
And so I encourage you to pause at some point today. And take a look at your own sweet life -- whether you are just a little family starting out, or whether all your birds have flown the coop and made their own nests elsewhere.
Who are you today? What do you love right now? What fills your heart with joy on this day? Pause and take stock of today because tomorrow will most assuredly be different.
I am working on a new book with Perigee Publishing called, Look At Us Now (And now. And now. And now.) It's an interactive journal for families with questions and prompts that will encourage readers to pause in family life. And in that pause it will offer a way of taking stock of the present; like an emotional snapshot of sorts. Each page, each prompt will offer a chance to look at family life right now. And right now. And right now. Because one thing I've learned in this parenting thing, which I'm now more than 17 years into, is that family life is a moving target; always, always, ALWAYS changing.
This blog post is part of a series for HuffPost Moments Not Milestones called 'Lived and Learned: What I Want My Younger Self To Know.' To see all the other posts in the series, click here.