Frame of Reference

I got an hour glass for Christmas. I have watched it more than a few times to figure out if it is exactly an hour. Thanks to some help from a co-worker, we figure it is exactly 30.5 minutes of sand. I turned 27 on January 15th. I realized I am quite close to 30 and that 30 isn't what it used to be. My daughter turned 6 months on the 29th of December and has hit major milestones at an alarming rate since then. All this to say, I literally can feel time flying by me. It sort of terrifies me and at the same time lights a fire under my arse to cling to the moments I have. I have spent a majority of my life wishing I looked different, lived somewhere else, was married, had a different job, could quit school, could go back to school. You get the point. Now I am happily married with a beautiful child a place of my own, I have traveled, I have tried different jobs, I have had plenty of money, and now not so much. I realize a little more now in the fresh start of my 27th year, there will always be something to look forward to, to reach for, to plan for but, right now, I might be missing the happiness of the things I longed for ten years ago.
Ten years ago, was 2001, I was getting ready to graduate high school. I was at the beginning of my fresh almost adult life. That time has passed by in a blink of an eye. Now I use that frame of reference for my next ten years and am aware I need to be a better moment appreciator. People say to me all the time, enjoy every moment with your daughter they will be gone so soon. I have thought in response I will just have lots of children spaced far enough apart that I can enjoy the baby phase for nearly half my life. Then Simone wakes up every hour on the hour through the night and I think, one might be enough.
 I look at my husband and see the grey hair popping up and the laugh lines starting to deepen, and at my own self in the mirror my body a stranger to me now after the battle scars of pregnancy and I know we will not be young forever nor will we live forever. Lately my life feels like that hour glasses draining sand. Just dropping from one bulbous end to the other so nonchalantly counting down the half hours of my life. I desperately want to plug up the hole catch the sand to remember that half hour. Time isn't so kind.
Instead I will savor these moments, journal about them, capture them on film, and share them with posterity in hopes that my children and their children will be better at living in the now. So that maybe George Bernard Shaw will be proved wrong, and youth won't be wasted on the young.

So here are some simple moments I don't want to forget...

 My gorgeous husband holding my sweet daughter. He is totally in love with her and that makes me more in love with him.

 A most beautiful breakfast in bed served to me after a rare sleep in. From my true love.

 A surprise birthday cake after a glorious sushi dinner from my darling sister.

 First time sitting up on her own. Big growing girl.

First pig tails. She is the joy in my heart.

It is these little moments that you can string together to make a fabric of happiness to wrap yourself up in.