Gifts

I have a son. I'm not used to saying it, so I'll keep practicing. I have a son. He is ten days old. My week has been filled with millions of seconds of elation. Each one of them I wish I could hold onto, but I can't. People keep telling me "they grow up so fast", parents of six-month-olds get a far away look in their eyes and say "I remember when I had one this small." It seems that in most of my happiest times I've often felt the little sadnesses that come from watching the clock. As if I'm trying to beat the rush on post-holiday depression, or post-accomplishment letdown. Its as if the realization of the fleeting nature of a moment somehow diminishes its potency or worth in celebrating. Part of me would argue that its not true, but that little feeling is always there. Life is a series of tiny moments, some of them fantastic, but all of them flying by in rapid succession. You can no more hold onto them than you can grasp the wind. I wish I could take one of them, pin it down like a butterfly, save it somehow. Keep a smell, a touch, a moment of holding my little seven pound boy and preserve it for a far off moment int he future. As it stands, though, the moments continue to slip through my fingers, and I know no solution. I've heard that some men drink to forget. If I was to ever drink, I mean really, seriously drink, I would drink to remember.

I pull my mind away from the sorrow of the future, and engage it fully in the joy of the now. This moment is a gift, and the next one. There will be other gifts, other joys, but like gifts, we do not control when or where, or why they are given. We only recieve.