The Priceless Present

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Dave Ryan, the host of my favorite Minnesota-based radio show said something really deep and inspiring this morning that I was so moved by, I just had to write about it. Dave and I don't always see eye to eye on certain things, but as a parent, one of the Great Unifiers, he's almost always spot-on. Well, this afternoon as I was listening to a re-play, he reduced me to tears. Not ugly, sobbing pitiful tears, but my eyes did well a little at the remark. 

My Facebook post sums it up:

Best advice I've heard all day comes from Dave Ryan from The Dave Ryan in the Morning Show : Whenever you go to your kids' games or recitals, don't tape it ALL. Don't watch your kids through a viewfinder because you'll miss it, you can't enjoy what's going on that way. It's not that exciting when you go back and watch it, so watch it live. 

He's so on-point with this bit of advice and I'm so glad this is something I had already begun to implement in our outings. Before, I wanted to try and capture every little moment in the girls' lives until I realized I was missing out on a lot by fiddling with the camera, or these days, my camera phone. Then what was worse, I wasn't even getting the shots I thought I was, when I came home at the end of the day to review the pictures I thought I had taken, knowing I had missed out on a lot to be the photographer and "get the shot". 

A fellow Mocha Mom-friend of mine recently lost her 7-year-old son unexpectedly and although I wasn't particularly close with the whole family, his death hit me hard. She recalled a memory on Facebook the other day in which she could have reacted a hundred different ways, but instead she chose to let her son just be. He was having fun with a friend melting candles on the radiator and rather than look at the fact that he was staining it and making it a mess, she allowed him to just treasure the moment and not feel bad for simply being a kid and having the healthy curiosity that comes along with it. And, now that he's gone, she has those colorful streaks to remind her that he was once there, loving life and appreciating the simple things, and knowing, I hope, that she was the best mom ever to him.

Something parenting has really taught me, especially when they're (finally!) in the bed after a long, busy, crazy day, is that one of the best things you can do for your kids is BE PRESENT when you're with them. Shut off the tv, the radio, the phone, the computer and just relish the gift of time that you have with them, because even though it's so cliche to say it, it will be gone before you know it. 

So now when we go out, I make sure to document the memory to share and revisit later on, but I'm very careful not to spend too much time behind the lens. Keeping the memory is great, but enjoying it while it's being made, being fully immersed in that moment that will never come back around again, is so profoundly priceless.