Sabitlenmiş Tweet
Once we got to the top of the hill, she said, “You can turn around now, Dad.”
It hit me like a ton of bricks. I looked at the grass, each sparkling piece of dew, trying to freeze the moment in time. For the past eight years, since moving into this neighborhood, I had looked forward to walking my future child to school. Now that I was here, I couldn’t help but have flashbacks to a number of “last times”: the last time I fed my daughter a bottle, the last time I helped her walk, the last time I spoon-fed her. And it reminded me of how quickly more last times will come.
Here we were…only on day five of kindergarten and the new school and already I wasn’t walking her all the way to the classroom. I knew that soon she wouldn’t even want me to walk her to the top of the hill.
So what did I do? I stopped at the top of the hill and gave her a hug. Just two minutes earlier I had been reminding her to move faster, to hurry up the hill. For what? Because I needed to get on a call? To talk to someone who could disappear from my life tomorrow, and I wouldn’t skip a beat? Was that really more important?
Alas, the cliché is true: I can either dwell on the past or be grateful for it…and grateful for this moment, because this moment is all there is. Next time I’m on this walk, I’ll try to slow down. Not to rush the climb to the top of that hill. Because if I’m lucky, she’ll let me walk her there again, instead of turning me back from the bottom.
English
