When you want the moment to last so much longer...
Recently my nutty little family and I went off to New Zealand for a holiday. It was for a specific reason... We wanted to connect with the kids, especially the surly screen addicted 15 year old, who we feel is drifting away from us (as is inevitable I suppose), and the other two, our girls, before they got too much older and bolshy. We wanted to get off our devices and just breathe. And talk. And laugh. And have time to interact without doing it to a timeline, to a deadline.
For part of the time we were away, a large chunk of it actually, we were in a motorhome. My hubby said it was like driving a whale - big, cumbersome, awkward. (A bit like how I feel a lot of the time!) We were all nervous about how it would go. Potential for disaster obvious. But in my heart I knew it would be okay.
That first night we were tucked up in our beds, and we had that fizzy funny feeling of the new and the novel. We all felt it, that sense of an adventure beginning.
By the end of the trip we were old pros at the whole motorhome thing, and we had a routine and a whole pattern to the setting up and taking down, the whole shebang. It quickly became not 'normal' but habit.
And now back at home, we are back into reality - 'normal' life well and truly. And it's hard to believe it all ever happened. You know what I mean?
And all I have are the photos (millions of them I admit), videos, souvenirs, and the memories. The memories of all those moments, the big and the little. Those moments expected, those moments totally unplanned and beautiful.
Memories of laughing,sharing, bemusement,joy,shared accomplishment,funny things,sad things,angry things,bad bits and good bits,even mundane bits.
And I wish that I could make every one of them last a little longer.
