As I listened to my granddaughters speaking and singing today, and my grandson talking last weekend, I found, and find comfort. In my adult life, I have always loved the sound of the voices of children. Most of all the voices of my own children. As I get older, I cannot now remember how my children sounded as they were growing up. It’s a thing that escapes me.
I know I anticipated each of them saying “real” words. Dada. Momma. I really enjoyed that “gobbledygook” process that the human mind takes to develop language, in each of them. Similar, yet oh so different. Individuals. People who my wife and I created together, because we wanted something in common, beyond our own love for each other. We wanted children. To us it represented our love for each other, and our determination to see that particular love continue on, beyond us, through those children.
Never did I anticipate everything that would be included in being a parent. Nobody can. Not even the best planners ever do. It’s the Chaos theory in real life.
But, back to the voices. I really wish there had been the capability back in the 70’s and 80’s to so easily record events in life, such as we have now. I can just point my phone at Ellie, like I did a few times last week, and push a button…..and make a mini movie of her. Laughing, dancing, singing. Another push of a button shares that movie with many people.
Tonight Rue is here, and I hear some of Jessy in her voice, and a couple of intonations of Kirsten. It’s deja vu.
I sometimes wish the mind worked like a video tape machine, and we could rewind it when we wanted to do so, and watch our past times, like a movie. I’ve seen Forrest Gump a dozen times, and it’s a great movie, but it’d be really nice to see an hour and a half of the day my daughter learned to walk, or the days my two sons learned to say Daddy (or Wawry, as it was) To hear that one phrase again would be worth more than gold to me.
But, time is relentless…and uni-directional. You’d better pay more attention to those things you may be taking for granted today, those things that will never, ever happen again. You’ll be sitting around in a few years, like I am today, and wishing you knew the exact location of those eight track video tapes your Dad took. I know I’ve got them, and I plan on finding them and having them digitized. Then, I probably won’t have to watch Forrest Gump anymore for a long, long time.
I hope I have the time to get it done. I think I do.
Time is our most precious commodity, no matter what we think, and that’s the truth.
Writing for Sanity's Sake 