"Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory." — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I’m sitting in a shady spot and although temperatures have tipped into the 80’s in Maine these last days, a cool breeze is grazing the skin on the back of my arms giving me a chill. I’ve been ruminating of late about my boys as babies, as toddlers—images of their less than steady gates, their need to be dressed and held up in the bath are swirling around my mind, around my heart. I’ve been feeling the impact of those bygone days. We were warned —more than we would have liked to have been—about the fleeting nature of those precious times and yet, here I sit on the other side of it all in awe of the haste with which it passed. I am grateful that I paid close attention and yet still I yearn for those chubby baby thighs, the rocking chair cuddles, the simple summer water play in a backyard baby pool. My eyes are a little dewy as I write this and I allow myself that bit of nostalgia before taking heed of these emotions as a cautionary tale about the value of these very times in my midst. Jonah called down to me yesterday from our upstairs bathroom, “I’m 44.8 pounds!” Later I watched him—shirtless and barefooted—in our driveway on his florescent green bike riding back and forth swiftly, then raising up so that his legs were straight for a long glide toward our garage eventually coming to a too-quick stop. We recently decided to name the bikes for their colors, for their speed. Jonah named his, “Running Grass” and Adrian’s is called, “Quick Cheetah.” Adrian’s bike has training wheels still and he sits very upright as he petals—quickly—down our driveway keeping pace with his bigger brother. We write so that we may remember. We write so that we may live this fleeting life twice.

A few years ago we decided to move the boys into the same bedroom. It seemed cozier. They each have a little twin bed on opposite sides of the room only mounted by a sort of box spring so that they aren’t really off of the ground. Jonah has a navy blue comforter on his bed, Adrian’s is green. The room is somewhat sparse although the bookshelf is overflowing. They are currently deeply involved in the Magic Tree House book series and have found fast friends in the characters Jack and Annie. They have said that my husband is more cautious like Jack and that I am more daring like Annie. Hearing that makes me smile. Each night we sit on the floor leaning against Jonah’s bed reading our nightly selection. Adrian is to my right, Jonah to my left. Milk often gets spilled and crumbs from “snack” abound. In the morning I often find a damp cloth from their bathroom and on hands and knees go wiping up the remains around their beds. We continue to utilize a leftover changing table for Adrian’s dresser only it too has books and drawing papers piled up on the changing pad which I reluctantly admit is still there. We’ve also kept a chime with four red glass birds in its place over the dresser. We bought it in an attempt to keep Jonah still when changing his diaper so many years ago. I remember standing on a rickety chair and falling when I first hung those chimes. Jonah can climb from his bed now and reach to ring them and does so every now and then with a little mischievous smile across his face. When we moved into our house we inadvertently replaced the light fixture in this room with a fan and light that was likely meant to be for outside use. The light shines only just barely though an opaque cover. We’ve left it hanging as it creates a nice little moon to keep on in the night. Adrian has been known to say, “turn up the moon!” Over the years a little part of the moon has lost a small layer of the cover. Laying with my children as they drift off to sleep each night, I must have stared up at that missing little patch of the moon one thousand times … or maybe even more.