Hold On To This Moment

My grandson, Joey, is fussing a bit so I'm holding him as I walk through the house, gently rocking him to soothe him, and helping him to hold his nuk in his mouth. My focus is fully on him when I suddenly wonder what Sammy is doing as she is suspiciously quiet. I stop and turn to find her directly behind me, no more than one step away. She too is holding her "baby" and trying to put a nuk in its mouth as she gently rocks the baby back and forth. She is looking down at her baby in an exact mirror image of how I am holding Joey and was just gazing down at him. I realize that she has been following me, watching what I do, and imitating my every action. As I stop to turn at look at her, she stops as well and looks up at me with the most sincere questioning look like "what's up, why are we stopping?"  My heart pulls in every direction because she has these huge brown eyes that just swallow me up every time I look at her. I am overwhelmed once again this day with how much I love her. I'm so honored that she too seems to love me enough too to watch me and to copy me for just a moment. It's a moment that I couldn't capture in the way that I typically like to - with my camera - so I have to just hold the image in my mind and in my heart forever. 


That's the way some moments are. Actually, that's usually the way the best moments are. They sneak up on you when you aren't looking and you probably aren't ready. And then they hit with you such power. In fact, the simplest moments can hold the most immense power. And, it is worthwhile to stop to recognize them when they happen, take a deep breath and look around so you don't miss a detail. These are the moments that build our memories and make our lives so amazing. We can't always capture them with technology so we have to keep our hearts open to holding them. As I looked into my grand-daughter's eyes, I told myself, "This is it. This is what life is all about it. Hold on to this moment."


Of course, Sammy moves pretty quickly so she didn't really stay in the moment quite as long as I did. As soon as our moment was over, she got bored with her doll, dropped it on the floor, and ran off to find her Auntie to see if she might be doing something more entertaining. 


Oh well...it was a moment for me and...I will never forget.