It’s a beautiful and warm February evening in the middle of winter. The temperature is in the 70’s, a rare occurance even for a Georgia winter, and the sun is shining and pleasant. It’s a great night for a walk around the neighborhood. As I begin my walk down the familiar sidewalks on this most remarkable of winter days, I’m reminded of a similar February day twenty-four years ago. My son had just been born about a month earlier in January and I was taking him out for a walk on the first warm day. When you have a baby born in the middle of winter, you don’t go outside unless you absolutely have to. Our days so far had consisted of a continuous cycle of sleep-change-eat every few hours, so I was excited to get out and show him the world. I bundled him up in the baby sling since he could not yet fit in the baby stroller I had bought, and we took off down the sidewalks on an unusually warm February day.
Now, here I am twenty-four years later, walking around the same neighborhood on another warm February day, minus one small baby of course. My baby is now grown and looking to start out on his own, at almost the same age I was when I took that first walk with him. It doesn’t seem possible. The neighborhood still looks about the same, though neighbors have come and gone. We have new family members and those who have left us. I am older, a little wiser, I’ve shed a few tears and have a few more scars, and oh how I wish I could hug that young mom! But I can also smile at it all, because through all the ups and downs, we get to live life, we get to love our family, we get to have memories, and we get to pass it on to the next generation. Life is not about being perfect. It is about living.
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” – from the wise Dr. Seuss
