The Me of Yesterday

Once upon a time, I had a newborn. He would wake every few hours in the night, needing to eat or snuggle, as newborns are wont to do. And I would feed him, and snuggle him, and feel the singular feeling of his face nuzzled into my neck, and breathe in his sleeping peacefulness.

I can remember it. I know it happened. But my memory of it is not the same as my experiencing it. My memory of the snuggles and nuzzles and peace are not the same as the nights I sat there in the glider in the dark, feeling it first hand. The haze of sleep deprivation and exhaustion and chasing around my toddler and returning to work and having a million other things to do hangs like a curtain between my memory of it and the actual event, obscuring it just slightly, blurring the edges.

Though I remember those nights, in reality, the crispness of the moment belonged only to the me who was sitting there right then. The memory--beautiful but not the same--is all the me of today has left.

I remember another night. It was my second time to be awake. I was sleeping in only 2-3 hour chunks. I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than for him to be sleeping, for him not to be crying and hungry. But I went and nursed him and snuggled him and he fell back asleep, and as he was drifting off, hunger satisfied, need for reassurance satisfied, he laughed. He laughed in his sleep. And the me of that night was there to witness it, a moment that would never have been if he had not woken, if I had not been with him. That sleep-laugh was perfect in its beauty, its simplicity, its joy. At that moment, my heart overflowed. It's one of my favorite memories already of the last three months, but again, the memory of it is simply not the same as the raw moment we shared. That sleep-laugh, too, belongs only to the me of that night.

The afternoon I held him in my arms at the doctor's office while he slept, while we waited for him to pee so that we could run a urinalysis to see if something was wrong. That afternoon nap, when I should have been working and he should have been at school, but instead I was getting to hold his sleeping sweetness, that belonged to the me of that day.

And my girl? My baby girl who is not a baby anymore, who has been such a total rock star at adjusting to sharing her life with a baby brother? Of course there are a million moments with her, too. Moments she'll come over and hug me or kiss me with no warning. Moments she'll laugh uproariously at some game we're playing, some face I'm making. Conversations we'll have where she'll show me just how smart and perceptive and funny she is already, at 23 months. Yesterday we took a couple of hours just for the girls and went to a bounce-house place in town. We jumped together and flung ourselves on the floor and laughed. We got her face painted for the first time (a blue butterfly mask around her eyes). We ate dinner together. And on the way home, she would tell me to sing along with her music and I would sing and she, after hearing me make a fool of myself for a couple of songs, jumped in herself after realizing that singing loud and offkey is a totally wonderful thing to do in this family, and we sang, loudly and offkey, together all the way home. That afternoon, that belongs to the me of yesterday as well.

Memories are all the me of today has, and though wonderful and soul-sustaining, they aren't the real deal.

And this is what I remember when I'm up in the middle of the night with a baby who is either hungry or just missing his mom. Or when I'm rocking him to sleep for the third time in a row. Or when my daughter needs my time, too, in a much different way than my son.

I remember that the moments that are happening right.now are the only moments that really belong to the me of today. The things that happen, which will one day become memories, will never be remembered with the clarity of the actual event. The smell of my baby, the feel of him sleeping with his cheek pressed up against my arm, the sound of my daughter's laughter--these are things that exist only in the moment. So I won't wish them away. I won't ignore them. I won't take them for granted.

The memories will belong to the me of tomorrow. But the clarity of the moment, the full experience, the raw emotions and joy that they bring--these things only belong to the me of today.