I wouldn’t get this time back with them. It became so clear to me. I mean, it is something that I had cognitively understood but not really known deep in my soul. Clarity came in a split second. Almost as if time stopped and waited for my brain to catch up. I recognize that time was rolling its eyes and wondering just how long it would take me to get there. It doesn’t matter how long it took me, I got there. I got there in a moment in time where the world froze.

It happened when he came and asked if I could hug him. As he leaned in, I saw him as a young man and no longer my baby. As he leaned against my body I instantly remembered the tears that I had cried nursing him to sleep at night when I was so tired that I thought I would die. How could this young man be the same child that just moments before I had been nursing. How did time move so fast and how could I slow it down. In fact, how could I freeze time. I didn’t want to slow it down, I wanted to freeze it. I wanted to freeze time until I could adjust things in my reality. I wanted to freeze time so that I could make sure that with every chance I could be present with him, with each of them.

In that moment, when I got really clear on all of the ways I had wasted my time with him, with them, I made a promise that I wouldn’t live like that anymore. I wouldn’t look back and say that I wished I worked less and played with them more. I would make different choices right now so that I didn’t look back at the end of my life with regrets. With this clarity, the energy shift inside of me was palpable. Everything changed.