Cherish

I wrote a story about the days after my second child’s birth.  I knew those days were special, a gift filled with wonder and awe.  Yet, I was miserable - stretched to the limits of my ability to subsist without sleep, without cooking healthy food, without free time, without claim to my own body, without skills to balance unexpected demands, wrenched with love for two tiny creatures. 

During that time I encountered people who reminded me how much I should treasure those special days.  All I could do was wonder, “How?  How am I supposed to enjoy this?”  After wallowing in the story as it became words on paper, I think what people meant was cherish the days but all I could hear was words of my failure to thrive in them.

The Merriam Webster site lists the following definitions for cherish.

1.  to hold dear; feel or show affection for:  cherish friends
2.  to keep or cultivate with care and affection:  cherish a marriage
3.  to entertain or harbor in the mind deeply and resolutely:  cherish a memory

Some moments I cherish are fun ones.  My disco roller skating tenth birthday party.  The first time I went for pizza with friends after a high school football game without my parents.  Road trips with college pals.  My wedding day.  The first run down a waterslide with my kids.  But some moments are so difficult we don’t ever want to do them again.  A breakup, nursing a child who refuses to sleep, illness, working through family issues.  Challenging stuff. 

Yet, we value the times of fun and difficult times that taught us we are stronger than our adversaries, stronger than our biology, stronger than our finances might suggest.  Who knew?  The older people giving me advice.  Maybe that is what folks in grocery stores and the library were trying to tell me.

Cherish is used often in reference to memories.  Sometime times we cannot value an experience until it has left us still alive and somewhat better for it.  Do we have to pass through and look back at something to keep or cultivate it with care and affection?

I’d like to try to cherish more moments in the moment with my family, my friends, and perhaps my challenges, too.  I want to hold dear reading Dora’s Book of Manners each night, night after night after night.  I want to cultivate care and affection for make dinner that is being rejected as gross before it is even finished.  I want to show affection for a conversation with my tween about anything at all!  I want to hold dear my striving to create organization and balance in my life.  I cannot say I enjoy some of these moments.  But I can harbor them in my mind deeply and resolutely.