Last night I came home from an errand to find everyone in the living room watching a movie. Christopher was on the couch snuggled under several quilts holding a giant bowl of popcorn while Paul and the girls were in chairs around with more modest bowls. They were all quietly watching “All Creatures Great and Small” from the BBC based on the James Herriot books. I pushed my way under the covers at the opposite end of the couch and helped myself to some popcorn. Eden ran and got me a bowl and then cuddled in beside me. Being there I thought of “Little House in the Big Woods.”
Eden and I recently finished it and I had forgotten how it ended. Not surprisingly, to readers of the series, it ends with Laura and Mary in bed listening to Pa play his fiddle and sing “Auld Lang Syne.”
When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are the days of auld lang syne, Pa?”
“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep now.”
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.
She thought to herself, “This is now.”
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.
Last night, smooshed against Eden and Christopher, I thought of that, how right now is so real and yet, before I know it, the kids are going to be grown and gone. There is such a strange tension in the passage of time while raising children; the days can crawl and the years fly.
It is what it is. This is now, and I know that amazingly soon it will be a long time ago.
May we cherish the time.
Thanks for the reminder. I love those moments of clarity.