Memories

Muenster cheese. My favorite Greenday sweatshirt. George Clooney. Some things get better with age. My memory, however, is not one of those things. I tell my dear hubby that if he needs something from the store he MUST write it on the list posted on the fridge so I don’t forget anything. Then I go to the store and forget to take the list. Brilliant! I’ve been struggling with my own stupidity for a while now. (Remember the Lost Marbles post from 2009?) And while it is completely annoying to forget such simple things, it never truly upset me until the other day.


I was trying to change Lexi’s diaper and she kept grabbing it and giggling like crazy. I called her the Diaper Swiper. And then I remembered that for the first three months of his life we called Brayden the Diaper Sniper because no matter how fast you were, there was a 90% chance you would get hit with a substance you really didn’t want to get hit with while changing him. How could I forget something like that? Wasn't it bad enough that I left my cell phone outside on the one and only day it rained in September and lost all of the cute pictures on it? Guess not. Now I am forgetting things I never thought I would forget. I immediately wanted to take a trip down memory lane and remember all of the fun things that the twins did. But in all of the chaos of the last three years I still haven’t finished their baby books; I am only on month seven. That is when I freaked out. What kind of a mother was I? Why hadn’t I made that a priority? How am I ever going to be able to accurately preserve such precious memories? HOW??

After a few deep breaths and a little bit of chocolate, I calmed down. I realized that my blog has acted of a journal of some sort (albeit not the best or most consistent). So all was not completely lost. And then as I watched Lexi kiss her Dad for the very first time, I had a revelation. My one-year old somehow reminded me that it is good to preserve memories, but life shouldn’t be spent looking in the rear-view mirror. If we do we will miss the magical moments happening right in front of us. Life can be fleeting. We need to live in the now and soak up everything around us. All will not be forgotten. Somewhere, somehow, something will trigger our memories when we least expect it. And like George Clooney, they will be even better with age.