Monday, May 26, 2014

Building Memories

Last week I read a couple of fascinating articles about building childhood memories in the digital age and how parents' over sharing might affect those memories. They were interesting pieces, especially one that delved deep into memories and photography, and looked at how digital photography -- where we take hundreds of pictures of one thing -- might actually make it harder for kids to use pictures to make memories.

Anyway, all of this is a long way of saying ... I didn't even blog about my most favorite moment of last week, and possibly of all time. It will be a hard story to explain to anyone who hasn't been to our Church primary, and I don't just mean any LDS primary, but specifically the Oshkosh Ward primary, which is held in the gym (a place that obviously creates lots of little kid reverence). But either way, I have to try ... because I don't want to ever forget it.

Wednesday morning I went to the Church to do some stuff for Young Women's. I put the kids in the gym with a couple of bouncy balls and figured that'd entertain them for 10 minutes while I fished around in the Young Women's closet (my nemesis). More quickly than I thought, I found the items I was looking for and took them out to my car. When I came back into the Church through the kitchen I could hear the piano playing in the gym. As I came closer to the gym door I heard a sweet voice singing along with the piano (which wasn't as horrible a sound as you'd expect coming from the fingers of a 20-month old).

When I was close enough to peak in the door I saw Reid, feet on the stool, belly up against the pulpit, and mouth right on the microphone, singing his little heart out to his sister's childlike accompaniment. "Jesus" and "Heavenly Father" and "being nice for other people" was the gist of his made up song. But even sweeter than his words, was his beaming face. He was so proud, to finally have that pulpit all to himself. He didn't even care, he was probably even relieved, that none of his teachers or friends were around to see him. He was just so proud to be at the center of that special primary room. In that moment, it was not a gym.

It was heaven. Seriously, for a brief moment I had a vision of the Celestial Kingdom. My Eternal Dream is just to watch that moment on repeat. Nell was adorable as she pounded away on that ivory, and Reid was so sweet as he sang his praises. I was crushed when Nell finally spotted me, stopped her playing, and Reid quickly flashed me a look of embarrassment. I asked him to continue his singing, even with me in the doorway, and he did try -- but the moment had been killed. That perfect moment was all too short.

My heaven had ended and ordinary life resumed as before. The memory will fade and likely be forgotten, but those few seconds were the sweetest ones of my entire week, the climax to my parenting thus far.    

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Cute stuff...

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