I’m going to be honest. Not every day at work is a walk in the park. In fact, some days at work are walking (running?) over hot coals to the edge of a cliff in the dark and taking a flying leap into the abyss in hopes there’s a net at the bottom.

I don’t mean TODAY of course (or do I?). But let me tell you this:

Whatever my day brings, the sound of “Mommy!” when I walk through the door and a snuggle with my girls puts the rest into perspective. Sure, sometimes “Mommy!” comes from a child with 102 degree fever for 3 days straight (that IS today) who, with glistening gooey eyes, says, “Mommy! I want you!” (meaning, I better be in your lap soon or else it’s going to get loud in here). Sometimes that same child has been up on / off for 2 nights and your worried self can’t remember if you slept.

Sometimes, you go into that room with the sick child to find her trapped under the leg of the sleeping other child – who, by the way doesn’t even remember you moving that leg as you freed her sister. Sometimes.

Tonight after dinner we watched videos of each of them as “babies” (aren’t they still babies?), and they laughed the awkward laugh of kids who are excited to see themselves “little” and yet unsure that’s actually them.

We also watched an octopus in Hawaii, Zoe breaking boards at karate, a pony ride that must have been one of Ella’s first (to which Zoe said, “Mom, those are the SAME PONIES! ha, she could be right), and Zoe’s favorite, a snowball fight with Dad 3.5 years ago – HALF HER LIFE ago:

This memory she JUST wrote about in her journal this year at school, and she told me tonight that OF COURSE she did, it’s “one of my happiest memories”. For the most part, Zoe remembers throwing that snowball at the car, not at me. I think that’s a good thing. Where’s freud when you need him?

Life is so short. And you never know when a moment will STICK and be the thing you think back on years later – half your life later – and smile. I wish for my children MANY of those moments and for myself, the patience to recognize them and be a happy part of that memory.

May we all have a snowball memory tomorrow – or the day after, or the day after that. A gal (who doesn’t even really like snow) can dream.