Remembering

There are days when the past ambushes me and I feel… not in a loud way.  Not like a storm beating down the door.  More like a whisper, the soft scrape of memory against the inside of my ribs.

It happens when I’m rinsing dishes or walking across the yard on an ordinary morning, and something happens — a smell of cut grass, the chorus of cicadas heating the afternoon, the way the late sun lands on the kitchen counter — and presses a hidden switch inside me. Suddenly, I am not here at all. I’m back in a moment, I didn’t know was the kind I’d spend the rest of my life reaching for.

My boys are little again.

One is chasing fireflies.

The other is smashing mud pies with the heel of his hand.

The screen door slams, and no one gets scolded.

The dog barks at nothing.

The hose runs unattended, making a lake in the flower bed.

I can smell the earth on my hands, damp and hopeful, because I am planting tomatoes. I’m thinking about dinner. I’m thinking about bills. I am thinking of everything except the sacredness of what is happening right in front of me. And now I would give anything — anything to stand barefoot in that messy patch of grass with those sticky-faced children again.

People talk about nostalgia as if it’s a place we visit.

What I know now is that nostalgia is a place that visits us.

It sneaks up with a photograph, or a song, or a scent that pulls open the drapes of memory. And there I am, looking at myself from a distance: a younger woman, unaware that she is living the most irreplaceable chapters of her life.

I wonder sometimes:

Did I know, back then, how desperately I would miss it?

Was I grateful enough?

Was I present enough?

There’s a hush that comes after those questions. A grief so tender it feels like love wearing a heavier coat.

My boys are grown now — tall men with deep voices and full lives. They send me pictures from mountain trails or city rooftops, stories of promotions and heartbreaks and trying new recipes. They call me when they’re excited, or lonely, or when their car does something suspicious. I am proud of them in ways that crack my heart open like a walnut.

But some evenings, the house grows too quiet.

Too orderly.

Too clean.

And I miss the chaos — the wild, holy disarray of having children underfoot. I miss tripping over sneakers in the hall and yelling, “WHO LEFT THIS HERE?” as if I didn’t already know.

What a privilege it was to have a life small enough that I knew who left the shoes.

Nostalgia is bittersweet that way.

It reminds us we once held something precious, and that we are forever changed by it.

But here is the part I am learning — slowly, clumsily:

The moment you are in right now will one day be the memory you ache for.

This morning, as sunlight slid through the blinds like warm honey, I felt that truth in my bones. Life is not asking me to chase moments or grieve them when they pass. Life is only asking me to show up — fully — while they are happening. To let myself be astonished by the ordinary.

To be where my feet are.

So I put the old photos down on the table.

I wipe my eyes.

I breathe.

Then I make plans to see my boys — my men — the ones who once fit on my lap but now carry their own keys and dreams and heartbreaks.

And I take more photos.

Not to cling to the past, but to honor the present.

Because someday — years from now — I may look at a picture from this weekend and feel that same jolt of sweetness and grief. I may whisper, Oh, if only I could go back. Just for one more day.

And maybe, if I’ve learned enough,  I will know in that moment —

that I lived it well.

Hari Om Tat Sat