Yesterday, Evie woke up crying at 4:57am — three full minutes before my alarm was going to go off.   I had to get up and find her pacifier, after which she quieted right down and fell back to sleep.  She always does.  I, on the other hand, had to stay up because it was after 5am and there were things to do.  I was annoyed.  Frustrated.  Those three minutes somehow felt like the most important three minutes of my life.  And I was never going to get them back.  I’d been cheated.

Of course, looking back — what is three minutes?   A quick flash, and then it’s gone.  It really made no difference to my day, and certainly not to my life.  Hindsight and perspective, as I’ve written about before, really do have the power to fundamentally change how we feel about something.  Think about something.  At the time, it felt important.  Now, it does not.

Over the weekend, I got the sad news that one of my friends had a family tragedy.  Her oldest son passed away very suddenly and very quickly from an unexpected illness.   He was only 8 years old.   I remember visiting her in the hospital when she had him.  I held him when he was less than two days old.  It’s hard to believe that in the blink of an eye, he’s gone.  And when I say hard to believe, I mean heartbreaking.

As a mother, there’s no way news like this doesn’t clutch at your soul.  Doesn’t make you immediately look for your children, as though your visual contact with them will protect them.

At times, we chafe against the daily details of parenthood.  Loss of sleep.  Loss of time.  Loss of sanity sometimes.  Our frustration comes out and – if we are being honest – we oftentimes behave in ways we aren’t proud of.  A raised voice of impatience.  A reaction rather than a response.  It’s inevitable because we’re human.  And parenting is hard and continuous.

In thinking about those three minutes, I realize that if something were to ever happen to one of my children – though I pray every day that it does not – I would still want those three minutes back.  Not to sleep, of course.  But to spend soaking them in and imprinting one more memory on my heart.

In three minutes, Evie can find me sitting on the floor leaned against the couch and crawl over to me.  She can pull herself into a standing position using my leg, and then step up onto my lap by holding my shoulders.  She can get her little arms around around my head and lean forward until her nose is smooshed against mine and our eyes are looking right into each others.  And she can laugh, because climbing on mom is funny.

In three minutes, Alice can run up to me in the yard and say “Hey Mom, let’s go running together!” and then squeal with delight loud enough to make me worry about what the neighbors might think when I immediately go sprinting across the yard instead of giving her a reason why I can’t.  She can run after me, smiling and breathless, saying “let’s do it again!”

Life is made up of these three minute intervals.  It’s impossible to appreciate every single one because we are crushed with the weight of the daily.  But sometimes, when the timing is just right, these moments come along that we can cling to.  That we will remember forever.  They happen quickly and then they are gone.

I have a coworker who, every time we are out together at the end of the workday, never fails to ask me: “so, what was the best part about your day?”  It’s actually refreshing, given the human tendency is to think about all the annoying moments and start complaining.  It changes the mindset and gets me thinking about the handful of really useful or productive things I accomplished.

I’m going to try to steal that from him and apply it to my personal life.  Rather than laying down at night and thinking about all the things that didn’t get done or all the bad parent moments that happened, I’m going to pick out the 3-minute memories from the day that I want my heart to always have captured.  The three minutes that, with hindsight and perspective, will define this time in my life.  Because I don’t know how many more minutes I will have with them, but I do know that these minutes – happening now – are precious.