Golden

Too often, these days it can seem that weekends are caught in a whirling vortex of diapers, nursing, trips to the grocery store, laughing, playing, crying, crawling, cleaning bathrooms, pulling up, drool, and ferocious flinging of foodstuffs from highchairs...It is heady, crazy, hectic, tiring, exasperating, exhausting...as if we are desperately trying to get caught up from the week past and be prepared for the week ahead and maybe do something fun if we have time...and very rarely accomplishing these goals in their entirety.

However.

Sometimes, rarely, we get a break. A small, intake of breath. A glimpse into something else, someplace else where the craziness, the worrisome-ness, the day-to-day-ness of it all falls away, prostrate to something bigger than ourselves, bigger than the minutiae of our lives.

Yesterday dawned cool and overcast, a welcome change from the hot sun (close at 7,000 ft. above sea level). Somehow, just about all our chores had been accomplished on Saturday. The house was clean. The laundry was done. The groceries were in the fridge. We had Free Time.

A little after noon, O and I walked to the park. It was pleasant and cool. Adults were chatting quietly on park benches while their charges ran laughing over the wood chips into thick, fragrant grass. The slides elicited squeals of delight and every once in a while a dog yipped, no doubt asking for the ball to be thrown just one more time.

As we approached the playground, I heard sounds coming from the stroller; excited little exclamations in baby language. Once we arrived, I lifted him up, out of the stroller, high up into the air and then set him gently in the baby swing. As I pushed, we got into a rhythm. Back and forth, back and forth...hypnotic. The chains squeaked with each arc. Squeak...squeak...As the swing came toward me he would smile, reaching out with his fat little hands, giggling when they touched mine. As he swung backward, he would laugh out loud at the sensation.

It was one of those brief, golden moments in time. The world was perfect, still and lovely. It was my fantasy, the one I had while pregnant with O, when I thought about being a mother. Everything fell away and it was just us, the cool air, the sounds of the park, and the swing. Back and forth. Back and forth. A metronome, a heartbeat measuring the time we have here, on this earth, together.