A Grandmother Understands the Value of a Moment in Time
Like sands through the hourglass--that's how fleeting childhood is
My daughter texted me a photograph of three of my 15 grandchildren yesterday. I saw the pretty day, the quietness of their mood, and then something more. It occurred to me that each of them is teetering on the edge of a life transition.
All of life is impermanent. We know that a photograph represents the light and shadow of a moment frozen in time, so to that extent, it’s permanent. As a grandmother, I’ve seen a lot of life and its changes
When I got my daughter’s text, I thought, it’s beautiful that these guys are enjoying time together. But something drew me in deeper, and I felt like I used to when inspecting a contact sheet in the darkroom. I really looked at the image and thought about how I was reacting.
Here’s what I came to understand. The littlest boy, moving a toy bulldozer through a sand pile, is 3-years-old, and he is 100% focused on the mysteries of how sand moves. As he should be. Three-year-olds interpret the universe based on what is in their focal point. So this little guy is doing his job, quietly and seriously, exploring his version of everything.
The bigger boy is five—pouring water onto tiny mounds of sand, mixing it in, and observing. He’s impressed by what he can do with sand. Fives are all about how they interact with and control things outside their parents’ sphere. This guy knows he can create things no one else can — things that are his.
The man-boy on the right is sitting quietly watching his brothers with a quiet expression of affection on his face. He is 17—a heart-rending age. He is evolving physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. Our adorable “little guy” will be an adult before we know it, traveling his own path. Sobering thought. In this frozen moment, he is almost certainly harkening back to the simplicity of his childhood. I know, because I know him, that he’s contemplating his feelings for his baby brothers, his changing relationship with the world, and the fact that he is about to join the Navy.
If this isn’t an iconic image of how life shifts and the rites of passage we all encounter, I don’t know what is. Without this image, a frozen moment, and without my having made time to study it, I would have missed something golden. And that’s my point.
As I write this story, my personal takeaway is about impermanence and haste. It’s about how we, as we age, learn to stop and mindfully delight in a moment. My daughter caught this slice of time in her kids’ day and it might now live forever, even though we live at warp speed these days.
Humans, especially those under 50, seldom make time for conversations because texting gets the job done. We binge-watch television content that once would have entertained us for 26 weeks. If we read, we read content, not books.
But as a grandmother, without the stresses and pressures of parenting, I’ve got time to stop and smell the roses. I treasure these moments in my grandchildren’s lives.
Everything in life changes, and each generation has its own focus. That’s all good. We should curate the photos we take so our grandchildren and their children can discover what their past generations looked like, what they did for fun, and how they lived. Global knowledge now doubles every 13 months, and it will soon double every 12 hours. Vrooom.
Slow is better. I’m much more comfortable at the pace of those young boys digging in the sand. And the moments are worth respecting and preserving.
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