for a time

It was the apple that finally did it. She had a loose tooth that had needed to fall out for weeks. We picked Ava up from school last Friday & decided to go somewhere filled with Autumn leaves to enjoy the end of the season together. It was there that the apple caused her tooth to finally fall out. She was happy. The privilege of being a parent is that you witness every step of a person growing. We marveled when she was unborn & a pregnancy book informed us of the actual week she was growing her eyelashes. We marveled when each & every one of her teeth grew. Now we share her excitement as her baby teeth fall out, reminding us that each stage of life is a season that we can’t hold on to. We can hold on as long as it allows, but then, it evolves. We are born into a world of seasons & cycles.

I remember. The park down the street. I was six. The leaves had fallen. The children were piling them up into one big heap. I remember my mother. Only 26 at the time. She began helping to pile the leaves. Then the boy with a BMX bike, he rode through the middle of the leaves, almost getting lost in the middle. One after the other we jumped and rode our bikes through the leaves and then piled them up again. I can’t remember the other children’s faces. I remember we were having a lot of fun. I wondered why we had never done this before. I didn’t know that the leaves were not always there. Only once a year. Once is all we get. Although we may be fortunate enough to get many Summers, Winters, Springs and Autumns in one lifetime. We only get one for each age. That was the only Autumn I would be six.

Lifes seasons are a gift. With each new season comes new challenges and new a perspective of beauty. Sometimes we don’t see the beauty until we are somewhere else looking back.  What I want though, is to see it now. While it’s here. For a time.