I use to live for a night out.  I say live for, but if that were really true, I’d be dead by now.  I don’t get out much.   I can faintly remember a time in my life where Friday night was associated with socializing and getting out of the house.  I won’t say what other images come to mind, let’s leave well enough alone, but I will say that those days of yore have gone the way of the ill-fated Canadian penny.

I now defend the practice of a night spent staying in, as it is far more in tune to the constraints of my current lifestyle and budget.  And if you can’t  go to the party, you might as well make it happen right where you’re at.   Inside the four walls of home sweet home.  With your own little family.

I am sitting on the piano bench in our living room.   The kiddos are settled in, under blankets and surrounded by pillows, on various couches and chairs.  Hubby has the recliner.  On the television are home movies, most of which were taped by my husband while I stood, with my post-pregnancy butt turned to the screen, tending to children.  Not an entirely flattering view of my assets.  In other scenes, I am breastfeeding and in still others, I am trying to keep a new born from drowning in our kitchen sink while I repetitively wipe at her delicate parts with a washcloth.  Ouch, poor thing.  What kind of delusional woman was I back then…but enough about me.   The children are glued to the images of themselves as babies and toddlers.  We even popped Orville’s special  corn in the microwave, and divided it out.  You would think it was Oscar night in Hollywood.

We started with a home movie of life in 2007, as all of our children were in existence and nobody would feel left out.  The youngest of our four had just been born, and the other children were 2, 4 and 6.  The movies showed our children’s performances in ice skating shows, birthday parties as well as snapshots of our family just having fun around our home.  In one vignette, our oldest and next in line are sweetly reading together, until he snaps and a fight breaks out.  Good times.

And yet.  Life seemed so much sweeter back in the day.

I am nostalgic, but then I remember.  I am in this right now.  I am living it out.  I am here, and present with my sweet family and were someone to tape a snapshot of life at this very moment, it would seem as sweet and precious as life seemed to be those few short  years ago.

So then.  This is the best moment of all, the one we are living in the present.

I join my daughter on the couch, and snuggle close to her under the blanket draped over her seven-year old frame.  She smells like the pool, where we were prior to home movie night, and I move in close to hold her.  I want to remember her just like this.  My little girl, so innocent and precious, is still that darling two year old that prances in pink tutu across the screen.

I’m not going to wish for moments I cannot have.  I’m going to live for moments that I can hold right now.  They are fleeting, and I do not want them quite yet to become a memory.