In the last two or three months, four of my friends have had babies. They look so tiny and seem so unresponsive. I just can’t remember Caleb being that small…wait a second. Caleb is not some gangly teenager; he’s still a baby, why can’t I remember something that happened such a short time ago?
A lady in our church nursery was reminiscing about her oldest child. She said she remembered so vividly cradling her baby and gently rubbing her sweet baby hair. Her daughter is about 10. I sighed, I hope the memories come back by the time Caleb is 10…and I suspect, they will.
One summer while I was in college I spent 8 or 10 weeks working at a church camp. It was such great fun. We swam every day, did skits, sang songs, made crafts, hiked and climbed, and just had a great, memorable time making incredible friendships. Over the course of the summer, there were things that happened (well one thing in particular) that was more memorable and emotionally charged than all the fun things we did every day. It was a misunderstanding that I allowed to define my time there. For a year it was all I could remember about that whole summer. Eventually the circumstances and emotions surrounding that particular memory became irrelevant in my life and suddenly I could remember all the wonderful, beautiful times we had.
I hope that the lost sleep and distractions of caring for a newborn will become in my memory what that old misunderstanding became – a fading memory – and that Caleb’s sweet tiny baby-ness will become more brilliant to me. It is so easy to become overwhelmed with the hard parts of caring for a baby, but I want to enjoy it as much as I can. I really don’t imagine myself as an old woman reminiscing about that time I slept in or a television show I watched. Instead I want to remember how tiny he was, how he looked while he was sleeping, and his first little smiles.
