I’ve been hanging out at the office with Emery, my 10-month-old granddaughter. She comes to work with her mom. Emery makes me laugh, and I make her giggle. She is a lousy employee; she sleeps a lot and doesn’t get much work done. On warm, sunny days, we walk around the pond next to our office and spot turtles before they leap into the water. She reminds me a lot of her mother.

Holding her every day is bittersweet because it is only for a moment. Emery is growing quickly and taking steps, which makes me think of a poignant conversation with a friend about children leaving. She grieved their flight into adulthood and their absence, even though they were well on their way to becoming eloquent, sensible, joke-telling, tax-paying bigger people. We are, after all, not raising children but rather adults who should and do want to leave. The grief for their absence, a longing for what once was, happened to me in micro-moments, the realization that I would no longer carry my children in my arms and that I was no longer a superhero, and that they intuitively understood the internet, calculus, and texting on a level I couldn’t comprehend. And there was that moment when I realized that all three of my children would beat me in a foot race.

All I have remaining is the treasure of memory.

The French have a phrase that can mean time, weather, or tense…Le Temps. My son,
eight years old at the time, and I were hiking on a mountain peak in Arkansas when he
was still dreaming of becoming a Meteorologist. We experienced a Le Temps moment when a thunderstorm wrapped around the mountain in a symphony of energy as the trees danced and finally bowed to a violent wind. The moment was weather and weather became time.

I realized what made my son tick and why he dreamed of Meteorology.
He grew up and went to Oklahoma University and achieved his degree and now is an
Atmospheric Scientist. I will always treasure that memory along with his birth, that
moment when Brandon struggled to take his first breath. He was purple at first, lizard-
like. Then a gurgling, a cry, nurses clearing mouth and nose. Magically he melted into the blanket, warm and pink, my son.

While my memories of moments with my children are vivid, others see through the glass dimly.

Mary Gordon was visiting her mother who suffered from dementia. Her mother asked if she was her niece. She said, “No, I am your daughter.” “Does that mean I had you?” she asked. Mary said yes. “Where was I when I had you?” Mary told her she was in a hospital in Far Rockaway, New York. “So much has happened to me in my life,” her mother said.

“You can’t expect me to remember everything.” Mary Gordon, author, Circling My Mother

There was a time in my life when I served Christians at a local retirement home by offering communion service for those unable to attend church services. One Sunday, I read from the Gospel of Luke. I look up from reading the crucifixion account to see Marge tilting her head to the ceiling and closing her eyes.

Next to her, Floy cups her hand to her ear like a seashell, coaxing the words of Luke from my lips. I ask her, “Can you see well enough to read the Bible?” She says, “No. And I can’t really make out your face, but I can see that your shirt is checkered.” I lie and tell her I am handsome, and she replies graciously, “I can tell by your voice.”

Marge asks about my parents. She once lived across the street from them on
Meadowlark Lane and I tell her that was the house into which I was born. She can’t
always remember my name or what happened yesterday, but she can tell me details
about the house of my birth. I told her that Paul Stumpff, a fellow congregant, helped Dad roof that house on Meadowlark Lane in 1959.

Marge said, “I remember Paul on the roof of that house helping put up a television antenna and he got quite a shock and they drove him to the hospital and the doc told him, ‘You’ll be ok. If you had really touched heavy voltage, you’d be dead by now.'”

I walked outside as wind-blown leaves somersault across the parking lot. The leaves are brittle but still lovely as they scurry to places unknown.

These moments resonate, even for those who see through the glass darkly as time fades and memory blurs. Gathering a swaddled child, a first kiss, the electric stirring of a thunderstorm, moments that feel like you are experiencing life for the first time, a wandering nomad swallowing raindrops in a parched desert.

We are all collectors, keepers of Le Temps, time and space. It’s really all we have. Our money doesn’t travel well, our stuff gets put in dusty garages, our houses need painting, our cars break down, and our clothes migrate to Goodwill. But moments in time, that’s the stuff we keep.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into
nothingness.” John Keats