Slow Down, Mommy; Hold My Hand

My Perspective

I’m sure I could have entered the Olympics for fastest walking moms, back when I was in my twenties and thirties. I was fast!

At the mall, good sales could only be found IN the stores, not between the stores. My goal was to minimize the time between JCPenney and Target. I was the human cheetah, whizzing along. The little kiddos whined often, “Mommy, waaait!” Their little legs were pumping as fast they could go. “Mooom! You’re going too fast!” The kids, now adults, still remember scrambling to keep up to the mom on a mission. Why was that SO important?

If I never get back to my Olympic-worthy walking, it’s okay. I have different priorities now-a-days. I’m learning that when you stop chasing the wrong things, you allow the right things to catch up to you.

Then you notice that chubby toddler hand reaching for yours. Then you take a moment to listen. You have time for the five-year-old’s knock-knock jokes. There’s time to lick the two-year-old’s sticky sucker that they are offering to share. You can recognize the need in the wobbly voice when they’re tired or hungry…or sad.

Life is filled with thousands of tiny little miracles. I would hate to miss them racing to the next store. I’d like to walk slowly enough to notice dimpled elbows and sparkling eyes. All the love shining from trusting faces. To feel their yearning and empathize with their earnest plea for twenty-five cents for the bubble gum machine. Because they grow up too fast. Much too fast.

You know what? We all have regrets—things we wish we had done differently. But there’s still time to learn a new way. To put down the phone. To stop chasing unimportant things. To look a child in the eyes and say, “Yes, Sweetie, I’m listening. What do you want to tell me?”