The Specificity of Moments

It honestly doesn't seem that long ago that my firstborn came home from the hospital.

We lived in California then. And, on a clear day, you could see the ocean from our balcony (if you stood at just the right angle and knew where to focus your gaze) -- so, I loved telling friends and family back in Texas that we had an ocean view.

News of the ocean view was eventually displaced by the arrival of our daughter, so tiny, so dependent, so bursting with the potential of a life full of possibilities.

I recall the long nights during those first few weeks, when I'd lie awake and listen to her breathing in the bassinet next to our bed. It was the same bassinet I had slept in as an infant.

Sometimes, the sounds of her breathing would stop, and I'd leap out of bed in the dark to lean in close and listen for exhaling or inhaling. If necessary, I would turn on the hallway light and bend down to examine her little tummy rising and falling.

Yesterday was her thirteenth birthday.

My little girl is a teenager.

This happens in the same year I'll be 40 years old. And while I don’t feel doomed by either of those events, I do feel the sharp pain of realization that the earth spins far too quickly.

Can I really be on the cusp of 40? Can my daughter truly be a teenager?

It's all too fleeting. I catch myself trying to delve back into my memory, convinced that if I can conjure increasing details of the years and months gone by, I can somehow expand them and understand the scope of all the hours that have gone before, all the experiences cradled by the days and weeks of my life so far. The specificity of all my moments will keep at bay the fleetness of life.

It honestly doesn't seem that long ago that my firstborn came home from the hospital.