"I'm looking at these and all I can think is that she was just a little girl," Dewayne, Malina's father said as he and his wife looked through their daughter's senior pictures. "Time moves so fast."
That's the curse of being a parent, isn't it?
We get these amazing humans, these remarkable little children and we pour the best of ourselves into them and love them till we have nothing left to give.
We praise them, guide them, protect them, pray for them, cry with them, grow with them.
Our children change everything and it's the best change we've ever had.
But then a few Christmases go by and summers turn to fall and then they're off, out into the big ol' world armed with only your love and a few words you hope they remembered.
The curse for parents is time.
In the beginning, it moves so slowly.
"My kingdom for some sleep," every parent cries as they get up for the 8th time to check on a crying child.
The beginning moves slowly but then, almost without us noticing, time grants our request. It goes faster and faster till one day you sit back and realize this is your last Christmas with your child living under your roof.
Suddenly you're packing clothes that they've grown out of and you're loaning them your car keys.
You sit next to them on the couch and realize their little body isn't so little anymore as they snuggle up against you.
You look at the child you created and loved and kept alive and gone is the little button nose and chubby cheeks . . . and you wonder where those childlike features went. You could have sworn they were still there yesterday.
You close your eyes and then you open them just in time to wave goodbye as that child sets off and starts life apart from you.
It's almost cruel if there wasn't any other way to do it.
"I saw that first picture," Dewayne said as he looked at Malina, his eyes slightly glossy, "and I just remembered when you were 5."
We can't stop time.
We can't get it back.
But we can remember, and boy, do we remember.
And in remembering the time that's passed we parents learn to love more deeply and cherish the time we still have.
Maybe it's not so much a curse, maybe it's a price we willingly pay.
The price of loving so deeply, so perfectly that even if we had all the time in the universe it would never be enough to love our children as deeply as we do.
So we take what we can get and we hold any and all the memories close.
And we remember that while time waits for no man it's a parent's love that makes its passing so bittersweet.
Cheers to the Butler Family and their sweet baby girl Malina who's getting ready for college states away. The Butler family has packed a lot of beautiful memories into Malina's last year of high school. This is a girl who knows who she is and how much her parents love her.
Hair and makeup by the amazing Shea Hollister.
Love,
Melinda
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