I.

I cried before my eldest daughter’s birth. It must have been around 1:28 in the afternoon. She had been in the breech position for months, her upright body folded in half. Uncomfortable, I’m sure, but I like to believe my heart was one of the first sounds she ever heard. It beats for you. That was all I truly knew. I was supposed to be filled with love, I knew, but I had only fear, and as I lay on the hospital bed, I felt the tears slide like heavy raindrops off my cheeks. The nurse looked over and asked if I was okay, and I said yes because I knew it was too late to say I had changed my mind. I’m not ready. My daughter was born at 1:31, just a minute past her scheduled delivery.

II.

One of my most memorable college classes was Intro to Philosophy. I took it first semester, freshmen year, to satisfy a humanities requirement, and it felt “college” to me. In retrospect, it was–with  tests that were impossible to study for and little that was actually learned. Certainly nothing retained, save for this one moment:

A friend from high school was in the class, too. Fifteen years later, I can still picture us in the lower left corner of the lecture hall, the professor asking the students to list all of the things that humans need to survive. My friend raised his hand and said Time.

The teacher snorted. “I’m not sure I understand that.”

“Time,” my friend said again. “Like, just having time to do the things you need to do. Or time to enjoy the things that make life worth living.”

“Ummm, yeah,” the professor answered. “I’m going to give that one two question marks.”

“TIME??” he wrote on the board.

We cracked up after class, and I busted my friend’s balls about it all semester.

The professor was such a dick.

III.

I used to love getting high in my dorm and synching the Wizard of Oz to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. “Time” was always my favorite song.

IV.

About a year ago, my youngest daughter was in her bed, alone, our second consecutive night of attempting to wean her from the cuddle-you-until-you-fall-asleep routine that seemed to drain Mr. D and me of our final morsels of energy. Her big sister snored softly from the bed beside her, but from outside the door, I could hear faint whimpers that grew louder with each sad breath.

When I finally entered their bedroom, the little one held me and said, “I was crying, mommy, but then I stopped. But then I started crying again.” She took a long pause, so long I thought she might have fallen asleep, and said: “I very, very love my dad.”

I relayed the message to Mr. D, who curled up beside her. As she wrapped her little arms around him, she whispered, in the midst of a contented sigh, “It’s good to be back with my favorite daddy.”

It transported my husband back in time, to the hospice ward of the oncology center, watching the slow rise and fall of his father’s chest, wondering how many more breaths there would be. His father was so sick, the cancer so aggressive, that it hurt to speak. But with the same rueful sigh, he looked up at his son and said, “It’s nice to wake up… and see you here.”

In a lifetime of things that never were, and will never be, we have the moments that are.

V.

Kids have no concept of time. That’s the magic of childhood. Adults are the only ones watching the clock.