One of our wedding presents was an embroidered quote.

 

"I shall not pass this way again, therefore any good that I can do, or kindness I can show let me do it. For I shall not pass this way again."

 

In our trans continental moves over forty years it was lost, but the sentiment wasn't. 

 

The other morning one of my girls asked if I would iron her skirt. While pressing may not seem like the most noble of gestures, it was my honor to do so. When they were little I had a routine of ironing their dresses, the ones I made with prints to go with every letter of the alphabet. A was for apple. B was for butterfly. D was for dancing. It gave them warm clothes to slide into on a January morning, and they felt loved. But those days ended in the blur of growing up and I was delighted to be given one more chance to smooth out wrinkles. 

 

There are ways to mark beginnings. Certainly births, and weddings are accompanied with a bash. And some endings are specific enough to warrant a goodbye party, or a funeral. 

 

But what of the rituals that slip away? 

 

I listened to a mother who looked up from the clamor of her life to notice that her youngest had stopped nursing. She is not sure when it ended, but she ached to think she had not been cognizant at the time. Surely those who have buried a child, or a husband wish they could turn back the calendar and relive those last nondescript suppers, and socks on the floor. 

 

There is a world of difference between clinging to today with a dread of tomorrow, and deeply tasting it. Watching your toddler's joy over a freshly baked cookie, holding the door for an elderly aunt who plods to her car are ways to pause in the presence of kindness. 

 

Then we can look back at the last forty years and understand that what truly counts never disappeared at all.