where did the time go? and where has my MEMORY gone??!!

quiet Friday morning.  I'm up, on account of the fact that I did not have Night Shift.  I've had adequate time here with John, Anne, and the baby to reflect on my own First Weeks of mothering.  I did have four children.  I know I recorded their every burp and smile and milestone (four kids: four filled-to-bursting baby books... 'I was Scrapbook when Scrapbook wasn't cool'. :-D)

Why can I not remember those precious weeks and days? Total absorption in the jerky flailing of tiny limbs which have not quite figured out the brain-muscle connect? Joy in the intent gaze she gives both her mother and father while feeding?  The unbelievable comfort of a fed and freshly diapered baby in complete contentment and abandon, heavily asleep on my chest?  I am reliving moments I (obviously) must have experienced many times, as though it were the first time.  What a dismaying and sobering thought! 

So, motherhood was my life. That was What I Did.  You would think i would have more memories of the small and amazing miracle moments. . . but I don't.  Thank God for pictures, for letters, for other people who will say "remember when...?"  I'm going to go home, pick up the photo albums, and look at them--really look--and try and recall the tiny, fleeting, precious moments of the four new lives we gave the world.

And I will thank God also for the two very competent, easy-minded, brand-new parents in Minnesota, giving my granddaughter a marvelous start on her life!  They are taking the sleep-deprived-stupidity and bleary it's-afternoon-already? moments in stride, are figuring out the lovely dance of handing off baby duty, and allowing me moments that I WILL remember. Because i am writing them down, living them, and participating with the full knowledge that time is soaring, with exhilarating swiftness, away.