Time

There's a lot we can do with time. We can waste it, which most of us do more often than we care to admit. We can kill it (which is similar to wasting, but sometimes more aggressively.) We can invest it. We can spend it. (These last two sound like opposites in the financial world, but in the realm of time, they are remarkably similar.)

The other day, my husband suggested we take our son to an outdoor store with an aquarium, just to wander around, not be couch potatoes in front of the TV, and to "kill time." I told him that any time the three of us spend together, especially in deliberate activity and introducing our child to something new is NOT killing time. It's investing in our child, one another, and our family.

Yes, there's lots of things we CAN do with time. There's a couple we cannot, though. We can't get it back. Once a moment is gone, it's gone forever. There's no DVRing or rewind in real life. Likewise, there's no fast forward. We can't pause it to hold onto something wonderful or skip chapters we'd rather not experience. Each moment is a gift that will never be duplicated by anyone else ever again. The good, the bad, the ugly, they all add up to make us whole. We are the sums of the parts. And we are greater than any one moment.

We also cannot add time to our lives. None of us know how long we have. Some stay on Earth for mere minutes. Others thirty-five years. Still others, like the recently departed last surviving veteran of WWI, saw 110 years worth of moments. We can't add time by worrying. We can't save time in a bottle. No, we can only spend, kill, invest, or waste the moment we're currently in. No one is ever guaranteed another one.

This past Saturday, I had a long while to contemplate this string of thoughts. My son had taken an early nap, but it was way too short. I knew he would need another & kind of dreaded it because he's gotten away from a second nap. So it's sometimes a challenge to get him to lay down again. But I also knew he'd be a pistol if he didn't sleep some more. So, I laid him down and curled up to watch college basketball. He cried for a few minutes but drifted off eventually. Unfortunately, he woke up after only half an hour. I let him cry for a couple of minutes to see if he'd zonk back out but he didn't. So I went to check on him. (It was the "Mommy, I'm kind of freaked out and I'm not really sure why" cry instead of the normal, "Get me outta here!" cry.)

I picked him up but he didn't stop crying. So I sat down in the glider, covered him with a blanket, and began to rock, trying to soothe him. Shortly after he calmed down a couple of minutes later, he fell back to sleep. Now, being his mom, I know this kid. I knew from the previous cry that he would likely just wake up and freak out again if I laid him back in his crib. I also knew he could use some more sleep. So I thought, "I can waste time and watch the basketball game. Or I can invest time and hold my slumbering 21-month-old son, who may not sleep in my arms many more times, if ever."

Yeah, I held him. For another hour and 20 minutes while he slept contentedly, I glided, patted, rubbed, and held my sweet little boy. And it definitely wasn't a waste.