At some point you will look back at this moment in your kids’ lives with the misty wistfulness of nostalgia. It doesn’t matter what the future holds for them, or which paths they take; you will look back at this time with a sense of longing.
It’s just a fact. Because they’ll never be two again. Or twelve. Or twenty- five. You get only so many bedtimes, so many baths, so many drives to school, so many vacations, so many evenings on the couch, so many times in the garage trying to fix something they asked for your help with. In the end, we will all wish we could go back in time to get just one more of any of those moments.
Well, that can’t happen. But there is a way that we can travel to the future, or at least speak to the future. As the great author of children’s books Adam Rubin has said: we can, by the choices we make today, tell our future selves that we did everything we could. That we soaked it in. That we didn’t rush through it. That we told them what they meant to us.
Do your future self the favor of a lifetime. Don’t take this moment for granted. Don’t let your temper rule. Don’t be stubborn. Don’t value the wrong things. Love now, while you can. Embrace the moment while you can. Don’t rush away from it while it’s still here.