Tonight, my daughter and I did our normal bedtime routine.
I told her two stories (one about today’s camp show, and one about a big dolls from Frozen);
We sang through our repertoire of songs, but this time she insisted upon trading off with each word,
sometimes each syllable,
making
“Yan”-“Kee”-“Doo”-Dle” and the rest of our lineup feel extremely long.
(By the way, I have no idea that song make it into the ritual for my David Bowie and Brett Dennen loving daughter; that was a total husband move. And he doesn’t even know the real words. He ends it with “Yankee Doodle went to town, ’cause he’s a Yankee Doodle Dandy.”)
Anyway,
tonight, we did things as we always do, until it was time for the last portion of our bedtime routine: the snuggling.
We snuggled under the covers a bit, and then, somehow, we ended up with both of our heads under her pillow, faces touching in the dark.
And then I moved back just enough so that I could see her face, and we kept opening and closing our eyes at one another,
making the other laugh,
and the song that popped into my head was Billy Joel’s “This is the Time”. Weird, I know, right?
Possibly even weirder than Yankee Doodle.
(By the way, I remember being in second grade and watching the video montage for the 5th grade musical, “Clowns”, in which my husband played the role of “Roger” {He would not forgive me if I did not include that} and I used to get all choked up watching those big kids waving at the camera, knowing that there was something momentous happening. That time was changing, that life was changing, that the world around them would soon be different, and they would be saying goodbye to what they knew, as they headed off to an unknown future.)
So tonight, as we cuddled under that pillow, I thought about the words to that song.
This is the time to remember
Cause it will not last forever
These are the days
To hold on to
Cause we won’t
Although we’ll want to
They say that in parenting the days are long and the years are short;
They say that life goes by in a blink;
Tonight, I lived up to my daily intention, in that I cherished every moment,
every second with my daughter
under the pillow
in the dark.
This is the time to remember, cause it will not last forever.
These are the days to hold on to.
I am doing the very
very
best
that I can.