It’s an emotional time of year for parents.

Graduating preschool, middle school, high school, college. Entering new grades. Last carpools. Last time in this or that campus. Weddings. All the things we knew were coming.

Then the things we didn’t know exactly when to expect. First teeth, lost. Strawberry Shortcake or hover crafts outgrown. New decisions made: to go back to Israel for another year or switch schools.

Sometimes we wonder as parents what our kids will remember. It seems that all these little moments, little interactions, the favorite breakfasts made or special Sunday picnics, might blend in with all the haze and cease to matter. The sadness that we feel at the passing of time is often about a fear of being rendered useless or irrelevant. Will anyone, including myself, care or know of all these moments? Or, as songwriter Abie Rotenberg put it, “What will become of all the memories / Are they to scatter with the dust in the breeze?”

This past Sunday my husband and I took our youngest, our six-year-old daughter, to Lake Farm Park. Just us and her. No one else wanted to come. At first I felt sullen and churlish but as time went on I looked at it like a date, with a super-cute chaperone. I hadn’t been there in about ten years.

Ten years ago our oldest kids were 11, 10, 8, 5 and 3. The trip was a reward for having collectively earned thirty marbles and involved sweat, emergency bathroom trips, and one unwieldy double stroller. It came back to me in a rush with every spot we visited. And suddenly, I thought:

We’re good parents. We gave good memories and fun times. Those years will never return, but neither are they going anywhere. My kids are blessed and so are we. 

Every breakfast, trip, snuggle, conversation. All the infernal projects we helped them with. All the special dinners for birthdays, welcome homes, and goodbyes. We tend to hold onto the guilt but the beautiful moments are there for the taking.

Because the moments are never gone. They are ours forever.