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| 4 km waddle |
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| Post-ride debrief at Swings with the Dirt(y) Fairies |
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| Sunset on our balcony |
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| Oscar the wonder dog |
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| Our little furnished apartment |
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| Family beach day |
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| Thanksgiving feast |
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| Yoga in the park - note the giant banana leading us in song |
When I was eight years old, my parents woke me up early on
the first day of Spring Break and told me we were going to Disneyland. After I figured out this wasn't just cruel
humour, I was vibrating with excitement.
While the trip was everything I could have hoped, it was the first time
I remember thinking about how temporary my enjoyment was and how important it
was to capture every moment. Not in a
positive way, but in an anxious, not-quite-normal way.
Since then, I've remained obsessed with how fleeting good times are,
trying to capture or extend them beyond their natural duration.
If I enjoy something, I want to make it a regular part of my routine,
only to find out on repetition that some of the magic is gone.
I started thinking about this today as Genevieve and I enjoyed a coffee at the Brew Shack. It was a perfect early winter afternoon, too cold for the park but perfect for sitting on their lumpy sofa with a warm drink cooing at the sunbeams. I immediately thought, "We should come here every day at this time!" and was then slapped in the face with the reality of our departing Margaret River next week.
Why is it that I wasted any of those golden moments worrying about the fact that once they passed they were gone forever? When Eric and I were leaving Colorado, I was desperately worried we would never have such a perfect life together again. Ditto Minnesota. Ditto Cronulla. Ditto Melbourne. Surely even I should begin to detect a pattern; life only seems to get better, in large part because it doesn't stay the same.
Is it because we moved so much when I was growing up that I anxiously grasp at permanence? My similarly afflicted youngest sister, Piglet, declared everything that happened more than once to be a "tradition". Seriously, you had to be careful not to use the toilet at the same time two days in a row around that kid. Or is it just a personality flaw not to be able to realise how fortunate I am during those best moments? And is our culture trending more and more in that direction, with the need to document our activities in photos on Facebook and narcissistic, self-obsessed blogs (natch)?
I read back over my entries for this past year's travels recently, and there were definitely fond memories that would already have been lost forever if I hadn't documented them. Does that mean they would have been less worthwhile or would have added less to my life, particularly if I missed some other golden moments squirreled away in the van scribbling them down?
As I stared down at Genevieve's mesmerized face this afternoon, I knew one thing for sure. She lives in every moment (and then forgets it). She'll never be 6 months, 2 weeks, and 1 day old again. She's a new person every 72 hours at the moment, so if I don't enjoy each moment for what it is, I should be slapped. I have found that to be a big lesson she's taught me: sometimes the magic moments are brief and followed immediately with shit (often literally), so I'd better revel in them when they come. I had to box up the anxiety about never being at the Brew Shack at 3:18 pm again and go back to nibbling on her tiny toes.
