Gains and Losses

Here's another one of those perfect winter things. 

When the snow on bare branches looks like this:

I know it's still only January, and we are in the heart of winter, but time moves fast and these perfect days are winding down.  Soon there will be slush and rain.  I'll blink and it will be Spring.

These thoughts weigh heavy on me because as March looms on the horizon, so does my boy's first birthday.  A time of joy and celebration, sure, but also a time of sweet sadness for me.  He's growing.  So fast.  Too fast.

I've been thinking lately in terms of gains and losses.

Each day with him I gain.  An almost word, a new smile, a new look, a new way to make him laugh.  But I lose, too.  His baby-ness fading.  His boyishness growing.  I think ahead to a time when I won't be his whole world.  The thought fills me with happiness, imagining how he will be and who he will be - but it also hurts.

And so, on this perfect winter day, I find my heart aching for the baby he was and the boy he is becoming.

Maybe loss isn't the right word.

Like the snow, moments accumulate.  Unlike the snow, these moments won't go away.  They populate my inner landscape.  My memory becomes a ball of yarn, wound around with a string of endless sweet days and beautiful firsts with an amazing little boy.