Now and later

Just planning the menu for the week is a challenge.  So many colliding schedules.  So many evenings when I won't be home at the right time to make dinner and no one will be home at the right time to eat.  I wonder how we will do it.  I look at the cluttered calendar and I wonder how it would be if it were empty.  How would it be if we didn't have 25 places to be at once? (give or take)  How would it be?

Then I remember.

I know how it would be.  I remember long days watching the clock for the time Adam would be home.  I wanted someone to talk to.  I wanted relief from whining and neediness and diapers.  There were hours and hours with nothing scheduled.  There were plenty of things I loved about that time but I don't want to go back there.  If I went back to then, back to my toddlers and babies, I wouldn't have my now.  I don't want to be without their good company, their humor, their imagination and cleverness.  I don't want to go back to watching the clock.  I prefer being in the midst of something and getting a call or text from Adam that he is coming home.  I still think hurray but I also think, wow, already?  Because my days fly by.

I look back on then and I prefer now.

So I wonder, in the future, will I look back on now and remember the good stuff but think, "I don't want to go back to then, because now is so great."

Maybe I need to stop looking back to the sweet and simple (though sometimes lonely) days and stop feeling like I'm on a fast moving my-kids-are-growing-up-and-I-can't-stop-them train.  Too often I long for the past and dread the future.

Instead I should just be enjoying because the now is pretty great.

And I think later, the now will be pretty great too.  Hopefully someday I'll have a son-in-law and two daughters-in-law to love.  With any luck at all, I'll have grandchildren.  Maybe I will still look back on the different stages of life with fondness, but I won't want to trade my life either.

So this is all my way of telling myself to buck up, buttercup.