The Remembering

He’s cuddled up in my lap, hair still wet from his warm bath while his tiny water-wrinkled fingers curl around his most recent prized possession. It’s the first thing he runs to every morning and the thing he requests at least a dozen times a day. It accompanies us in the car, on trips to his cousins’ house, and even during the occasional mealtime. I often have to remind him not to put it in his mouth, but really, how can I blame him? After all, is there anything more deliciously appetizing than a pumpkin in the fall?

Tonight’s bedtime routine is no different from the ones that have preceded it for weeks and months. We brush teeth, take a bath, and I chase him around his dimming nursery for ten minutes before finally wrangling him into his diaper and jammies. Tonight he’s wearing my favorites—the Gap ones with the colorful trucks and cranes zigzagging every which way. Adorably attempting to remove the feet from these footie pajamas, he sits and grabs at his hidden toes while I pull the seasonally appropriate “Duck & Goose” book off of the white IKEA shelf—the one where they find a pumpkin. He holds his own beloved “pumpa” while I read, looking up at me each time I utter the oft-repeated word “no,” wondering, I imagine, why I keep saying this when he’s done nothing at all to deserve it.

After two (or three or four) readings, I place the book back on the shelf and put his pumpkin in its rightful place on the dresser next to the lamp, much like a trophy on display for all to see. I flip off the light and begin to rock my almost-one-year-old to sleep, squeezing my eyes shut in the dark. Most nights my eyes close automatically—fourteen straight hours of “mom-ing” will do that to you. But tonight it’s more than the exhaustion that forces them closed. With only three weeks to go before my son’s first birthday, I’m doing my best to take in every last bit of these unbearably sweet, tragically fleeting moments of his infanthood. If my eyelids are the shutter, my brain is the camera, housing tens of thousands of moments turned memories just like this one. If I’ve learned anything about Time this first year of my son’s life, it’s that he’s an outright thief, stealing away these moments one by one and diminishing my memory of even those most sacred and treasured.

* * *

The orange and white spheres dotting the open field come into view as our gray Honda Civic approaches the lot. After allowing my excitement to build for the entirety of the 35-minute car ride, I place my hand on the side of the door, flinging it open the second we stop. I swoop into the back seat and retrieve my restless son, knowing instantly that this is going to be one of those memories I’ll desperately want to hold in my heart forever. It’s already my favorite seasonal rite of passage—that inaugural trip to the pumpkin patch. But having a baby in tow while we hunt for those jack-o-lantern-worthy gourds? You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s a reel that’s played in my daydreams a thousand times before. And now here I am, those dreams my reality.

My fall-loving heart explodes as I watch my firstborn toddle around the patch in his denim-blue jogger overalls, excitedly pointing at all of the “pumpas.” He makes his way from one to the next, occasionally tripping over a prickly vine, hands and knees planting firmly in the slightly damp ground. The air holds the perfect amount of chill—just enough to necessitate wooly sweaters and cups of hot cider. And the breeze is a mixture of earthy and sweet—overturned dirt mingling with the scent of saccharine apples just one field over. These are the details I’m filing away; the present moments being saved for a future me who will want to look back and remember this past.

* * *

I always struggle with the remembering. Actually, I need to qualify that. I suppose it isn’t really the remembering itself. My issue, the issue that haunts me on at least a weekly basis, is how best to remember the terrible-wonderful that is my life playing out in front of me each and every day. It’s the very real tension I feel between wanting my iPhone velcroed to my side, while at the same time desiring to keep it out of sight most hours of the day. It’s the manufactured lens versus the natural eye. Capturing and curating versus mindful, real-time attentiveness. Do I push the record button and risk missing out on the fullness of the present moment for the sake of having this memory to replay over and over again for a future version of my most sentimental self? Or do I set the camera aside and instead capture this fleeting moment in my mind’s eye alone; the edges of the pseudo-pictures fading over time, but the details remaining sharp because I lived them—really lived them.

I often try to place myself five years in the future and think about what it is that I wished I had done with the days I’m currently living. Within the specific context of remembering, I wonder what I will want more of: memory cards or just plain memories. While it may sound obvious, the answer, I think, is both. It’s balance. It’s enough of the recorded stuff to satisfy that deep-in-my-bones yearning to experience afresh the puffy eyes and shrill cries that accompanied the newborn stage, as well as all of the firsts that those initial 12 months of life hold. And it’s also plenty of moments that didn’t make the highlight reel—the ones only documented on my heart and in my mind. The ones where I stared straight into his eyes instead of through a lens, and where I didn’t risk him stopping those belly laughs in the time it took for me to run and grab the camcorder. These are the more special ones, in my opinion. But I still need the others. I definitely need the others.

This summer my husband and I (and our sleep-resistant eight-month-old) walked along the Carolina Coast, kicking at ankle-deep waves while the sun made its most glorious morning debut. I was struck by how many people (myself included) had their cameras at the ready, choosing to watch this beautiful solar phenomenon through the screen of their phone, consciously or unconsciously forfeiting some of its magnificence in the process. I snapped and recorded as shards of red and orange broke through the low cloud cover, splintering the sky and brilliantly reflecting against the ocean’s glassy surface. When it was all said and done, I had more than 20 photos (and three videos) of the same exact scene. One or two would have sufficed, I later told myself. I had plenty of proof that I had witnessed that gorgeous Thursday morning Nags Head sunrise, but at the end of it all I was left empty of the experience. I longed to relive the last 40 minutes—this time without my phone.

I know there are less sentimental moms out there, ones who don’t give second thought to their camera to non-camera ratio, marching forward with a steadfast acceptance of and readiness for the future that I can only observe and admire from afar. I know you because I’ve met you. But I also know that I’m not you. I’m the mom who stands at the sink weeping over the half-peeled kiwi in her hand because HOW ARE WE ALREADY AT THE STAGE WHERE I’M PEELING KIWI FOR TOMORROW MORNING’S SOLID-FOOD BREAKFAST? I’m the mom who started emotionally preparing herself for her son’s first birthday three months in advance because, well, it was necessary. I’m the mom holding tightly to a dear friend’s emphatic promise that each stage is better than the last. Burdened by both the passing of time and my own thoughts about whether my attempts to capture what I can of it are right or wrong, helpful or prohibitive, I aim for balance and try to give myself grace.

* * *

His head rests on my shoulder while a barely-there snore makes its way to my ear. The aroma of his lightly-scented hair fills my nose, and I take a deep breath: my way of remembering. I eventually lay him down, leaning in close to watch his chest rise and fall. He lets out a grunt and changes position, his little bottom now up in the air as he pulls his arms in close to his chest. I walk over to the nightstand and grab my phone. I know it’s risky to use the flash, but I do it anyway. Snap! Another way of remembering. I only have three weeks left before he turns one, and you better believe I’m filling my heart and my mind and my walls and my shelves with memories of this not-so-little baby of mine.

Ready or not, from infanthood to toddlerdom we go. Spoiler alert: I’m not ready.