Temporary

Your laugh made me cry today. 

You were standing on your little trampoline bouncing and giggling. Your face was lit up with delight, as bright as the actual sun. I kept sneaking up on you to pinch your tiny sides and it was making you laugh harder.  That specific little laugh of yours that feels like it pierces straight into my body and tickles my happy nerves. 

It was the purest kind of joy. The kind of “in the moment” presence that most of us try to cultivate more of.

And then, like I was floating away from my body, I suddenly became aware of the moment.

The devastating, awful, terrible truth that it, like all moments, won’t last.

And my mind…..lost its damn mind.

You’re not going to be this little forever. Do you even know how much I love you? Omigod, I am having another baby in two months. What if you don’t think I thought you were enough? Some day you aren’t going to think I’m this fun or funny and instead of soaking it all up, I’m going to make you share my time and attention. How could I betray you like that? And your poor baby brother. If I’m already betraying you NOW, how am I ever going to be there for BOTH of you the way you need me to be!?

What if I’m not enough?

I snapped myself out of it and tried to regain some control of my thoughts.

Do not let these fears take over your thoughts right now. You don’t want to be up here in your head. You want to be down there in the moment. LIVING it. FEELING it.

It’s all so…….temporary.

Even if it hurts……You don’t want to miss it.

I focused my attention back to you. It felt like forever that I was lost in my head but I think it was only actually a second or two because you were still laughing and I was in the same spot.

Only now your face looked even smaller and sweeter than it did before. It made my heart fill with joy and break into a million pieces all at that the same time.

That’s when the tears came.

I picked you up and squeezed you as hard as I could without breaking you. You squealed with delight while hugging me back and squiggling away.

The tears were hot and pouring down my face but I kept laughing because you were laughing. The laughing made it hard to breathe without breathing in the tears. THAT made me snort INTO your neck because I was still trying to hug you…..which just made me laugh and cry harder.

This went on for a while. Me crying and laughing and snorting like an idiot. You throwing your head back and laughing, climbing all over me, and probably wondering why your Mom is such a crazy person.

It was a disaster.

A hilarious, beautiful, tender disaster.

Later, as I was sharing all of this with my husband, I wondered: why DID my head go into that insecure fear spiral in the middle of such a joyful moment!?

I don’t know the answer to that question. But I think sometimes when positive emotions are so big, and so deep, and so raw and so pure….they overwhelm our systems. They are the ultimate vulnerability. We know it won’t last forever and that terrifies us because…. What if we never feel this way again?

Our mind pulls us out, trying to protect us, but it just plays tricks on us. It convinces us that the messiness, the imperfection, and the temporary of it all is somehow bad or our fault. Like we could prevent it from hurting or stop it from ending somehow.

But none of that is true.

The temporary is exactly what makes it so sweet.

And in those tiny milliseconds when we are lucky enough to notice that that we are transitioning from one moment, one precious phase of our life, to the next?

Let’s laugh through the tears, cry through the laughter, and squeeze our loved ones until it makes us snort.

Let’s make sure we FILL our hearts with gratitude for having experienced the beautiful, temporary moment we are leaving behind.

Love.Messy.Life.

More about this blog: About Love.Messy.Life More about the author: About Lainey