Pictures in my mind.

I see pictures in my mind, and I can feel how I felt when they happened, are they real or are they just flickering thoughts from a time that no longer is real? Where did those faces go. The smiles were there for a reason, what were the reasons. Are they still smiling?
I ache when I stay in that time, yet I want to go there. Does it exist somewhere? When time is here, then it passes where does it go. Does it stay as perfect as I see it but somewhere I cannot get to? Floating around in a bubble of perfection.
I want to go into that one picture I have of you. You are smiling at me with that warmth that came from in your large but broken heart. I see you look right at me and smile. Our son is a baby, he is in his car seat. We drive away from you in the slowest and longest moment. I look and it is as if I know that I must preserve this minute as perfectly as I can. We are backing away and I am locked on your eyes. The smile you give me is enough to last me all these years. When I long to be with you it is to this picture I go, in my head safe and protected from time. Time stopped that moment for me, gave me that and I knew. I looked as we drove away and I knew that it was a moment I had to have and that I would have. Where is that moment? Where did you go? Your smile was real, and our love in that moment was as perfect as a child and mother’s love could be. It is that look I see and I miss, and yet it is there for me always. The moment we drove away and I looked back you had already walked inside and that was done. The moment was made and sent away, to me. Did you save it too? Did you see my eyes and the smile on my mouth as we left. Did you feel the intensity of the love that I poured out to you in that moment. When you went inside and were alone, did you sit and feel how time had given us a perfect moment. It was one, but it was. We have it. I have tried to write about that so often and I can not find words that are descriptive enough to tell that story of that day. How you looked at me and we drove off.
Time is kind and cruel. It gives us so much and yet some minutes are so slow, they drag on and we wonder when will this minute pass? Then we have minutes that are so beautiful they make us aware of the beauty of being human and having a heart that can love but hurt as equally. We curse time when it goes by us and we want to go to that moment and stay there. But time is a relentless fan of routine and stays its course and never lets up for even a brief pause. We must be open and aware of what it gives us.
I have that moment and it is perfect, I am driving away and I see you looking into me and I hold you there, time was gentle and let the moment linger, I knew what was going on, I was aware of time.
Time is so fluid when I think of that moment, it is as though that minute was not a minute, as though time gave me the freedom to make it more, to not restrict me by its rigid limits. I drifted in that time, and I knew that it was a gift to not feel the limit of the moment. I knew that I would go back to that piece of existence and dwell. Time for the most part is so adamant about being precise. I feel the moments go and I feel the days pass.
Our existence is largely a race with time, an endless pursuit to hurry it or pause it. When we are young we want time to go fast, we want to be older, to know more, feel more, live more. But as we age, we regret that original want, as we want to delay the passage, to stop its rapid march forward. We then realize the presence of each minute. How can we waste so many? I take the moments that are beautiful and I give them more value, I notice them, I enjoy them, I love them. That is what has made life so incredible beautiful and yet so wearily heart breaking. It is this relationship we have with seconds, minutes and days. The pieces of life that are the best are when time is un-noticed. We pay no attention to its demands. We just live. We just love, we just are.
In that moment when I last looked at my Mum, how did I know? Did I know I would never look at her again? Did some pretend god give me the grace to pause, to know, to love? How was it that I held it so hard, so deep, so endless.
Her eyes were so green as they looked and her smile so real. She was giving me the love she always gave, yet it was different and I took notice. I looked in the back seat at my own son and realized that love is always present. There is always a way to love and to notice the little acts that love give.
Today I sit and I feel how I felt in that moment. Since that day I have paid attention. I respect time and the power it can have and I do not fight with it. I age, I live, I feel, and I try. I am the best I can be each day. I take notice of leaves blowing, the sun shining, my son’s tenderness. Life is now and if we just live each moment as the gift that it is, we feel more, we notice things, we love.
We love. I have a moment in my head and I see the green eyes, the wide smile, the wind blowing her hair.