Nothing gold can stay

So, today Amy found an old video clip of Sahara from a year ago. As always, it was cute, but achingly so this time. As I watched a smaller, less articulate version of my daughter toddle around the living room laughing, it occurred to me that this little person was, in a sense, gone. She'd moved on, grown up, become something slightly different and would never go back to being that cute little one year old in the video clip.

Funny thing. You chart their progress every day, taking pictures and video, writing about them in blogs, weighing and measuring them at the doctors office and thinking about them endlessly. Then you see some old video or picture and you find yourself caught completely off guard. Your breath catches for a second and a melancholy longing washes over you. How could this have happened? Where did my little one go? I hadn't even noticed...

Perhaps the fact that our children grow up right before our eyes, day by day and moment by moment, robs us of perspective. Perception depends on contrast, which, when it comes, shocks us. We focus so intently on the little tree that we're stunned to discover the mighty forest.

The term 'cliche' is for the young and inexperienced. For those who pass through them, cliches are nothing less than poignant reality. As kids we listen as our parents talk about time flying and children growing up too fast. But we neither grasp the sentiment, nor understand the sentimentality it occasions. And when we finally do, when it's our turn and our children, we're taken aback by the relentless, one-directional march of time and (most significantly) the fact that there's isn't a thing we can do to stop or slow it.

We always knew that. But not really. Academics touch the mind, but experience extends to the heart.

So there'll be a few extra dances around the living room tonight with Sahara; a few extra hugs and kisses and books read before bed. What else can I do? I look at my beautiful 2 year old girl, who I love with all my heart, and know where this is headed in 16 years. And I have an idea how short those years will be. Time promises to change all that I hold dear. And I, acknowledging that fact, can only reply, "Yes, but not tonight. Not tonight."

- - -

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost