I don't want this to be me

Anna Quindlen is one of my favorite authors. This is a quote from Loud and Clear (2004). My girls are only 7.5 and 8 but I'm already guilty of "hurrying" them along. It's something I work every day to avoid doing, but sometimes I just get caught up in thick of things. I'm making it a goal to read this every day.

“The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.”