Looking Forward

Our oldest turned sixteen last Sunday.  It's taken me a week to wrap my head around that.

Sixteen.

I remember turning sixteen.  I remember writing in my diary that night that a woman had told me she wished she was sixteen again.  I felt sorry for her and told my future self not to live looking backwards. 

And now my son is sixteen. 

He was born two weeks early, we brought him home wrapped up in a blanket on a hot August afternoon, we blinked, and now I'm calling to schedule his driver's test.

And I'm so proud.

And I'm so thrilled.

And I'm so sad.

And I'm so very desperate.

Desperate to remember the here and the now because I never thought I'd forget how soft his baby skin was or what his toddler voice sounded like, but now they are memories that are hard to conjure up.  And I don't want today to become the hard to remember moments of tomorrow.

And yet that's how life works.  Time really does march on.  Memories  really do fade.  And we are left with the new here and now.

So my sixteen year old self might have had the right idea.  I can't live looking backwards, trying to hold on to the moment that was meant to be enjoyed in the moment. 

But, I can love this moment.  And I can love the next moment. 

And I can treasure the young man who will be pulling out of our driveway all alone this week.  And I can tell my arms that are aching to hold the baby version of him one more time that it's not over. 

It's never over.

There will always be the here and now.

And when the here and now moves into eternity, I know beyond a shadow of doubting these arms will find their way around this boy of mine and his brothers and his sister. 

And I'm really going to love that moment.