Slow Down

Slow down, you move too fast...
Got to make the morning last, just...
Kicking down at the cobblestones...
Looking for fun and feeling groovy...
I remember, way back when I was in college, this was one of my favourite songs. I'd love to sing it every Saturday morning as I woke up to the realisation that there was no hurry, and I and my friend Sherry would run around the colony, singing it at the top of our voices, flopping down amongst the dried leaves and scaring the poor mynahs...

Last week, when my aunt was visiting, I opened up our photo album on the computer to show her pictures of the family - she hasn't been here since before I was married so there are years to catch up on. I opened lots of albums from 2003 and 2004 - and there was Chubbocks, fat, rosy, rounded face beaming back in enjoyment or all frowny with fierce concentration as he tried his favourite game of fitting different keys into the doorlock. There was my first ownty downty baby, crawling...and then waddling around like Donald Duck, with his diaper sticking out behind him...Thoroughly loving his bath and looking like an angel, all covered up in bubbles. Rolling over and over in our roof garden out of sheer exuberance.

When did he become such a big boy? I don't remember him growing up. On the other hand, I don't remember him as that baby either. I look at the pictures and it's almost as if I'm looking at someone else's baby, because his picture in my heart and mind are from the way he is today - the handsome boy who loves talking to any and everyone about whatever he's seen and done that day, the kid who throws the cricket ball quite well and can hold a straight bat, the one who makes 'deals' with me...like the one from two weeks ago, where the deal was that he'd get to sleep over in our room every Sunday. Where and when did this babylicious, cuddly, helpless little creature transform into this confident young boy of almost five - give it another six days?

Well, I'm sure I remember Puddi better, she's much more recent, I think to myself and turn to her pictures from 2006. Only to react with shock. I don't remember her being this small...or this thin. I thought she was a healthy weight when she was born. Gee, I don't remember this funny picture in which she's pursed up her mouth and twisted her face - she looks like something out of a comedy film. Oh my, she looks like the baby in Species in the next one ( I have to admit, I started out spooked by her because she was born on 6-6-6. Not that I believe in all that, I'm just sayin'...) I go through picture after picture, trying to recapture what I felt at that moment, what I was thinking, maybe a trace of an actual memory of that day in my heart or mind, instead of in a picture...But no, it's all gone, and all I have in my heart and mind is the reality of what stands before me today.

Not that I mind today or am disappointed with it - au contraire I'm enjoying every moment, but I do wish there was some kind of sensory-emotional camera with which you could record your feelings and changing emotions as your kids grow, so that you would always be able to look back and say, That's what I was feeling, and this is what you made my heart feel when you did that. ( oh, wait, wasn't that why I started this blog?) I don't know, I guess every day so much happens to and with the kids and '...always at my back I hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near...' - it's like trying to hold a fistful of sand in your fist - sooner or later it all pours out.

I'm already angsty picturing the kids gone - and this when Chubbocks almost tearfully decided just last week that he couldn't be a 'dentust' because he'd then have to go and live in our dentust's house. I just read this article over at msnbc...and you'll just have to pardon my not ending this post on a note of closure as I choke back a sob and rush out of the office back home to hug my babies and reassure myself there are plenty more years left...