Yesterday…

On Monday, thanks to Papi thinking about others, we went up north and spent time with Joel and Caroline so Mom and Graham could have some one on one time. With Emmett at camp, it seemed like a good time to make this happen. 

We took Mutt and Jeff to the Children’s Museum where they did all their favorite things like building a fort, driving the tractor to harvest corn, climb in the three floor deep apparatus and basically run around touching everything. 

Caroline spent some time doing one of her favorite activities. A series of pipes and hydraulic air pumps allow her to move small yellow ping pong type balls through the process of distributing “corn” to its various locations. 

It all starts with turning the handle of an auger with a great deal of energy. And so I fed balls in while our girl turned the wheel as fast as she possibly could. Which was pretty fast. 

A little boy about three years old came to watch her. She showed him where the balls come out on the other side of a glass screen and told him to collect them. I went over to help him as she was obviously fine on her own. 

As the balls came tumbling down the apparatus and bounced onto the floor, he clapped his hands and danced around with about as much joy as a human can muster this side of heaven. 

I stood there watching Caroline through the glass, one arm turning the wheel and the other giving me a thumbs up. Her smile was beaming as she watched this little one run around gathering balls while also shouting with enthusiasm. 

The last of the harvest was trickling down when she came and joined us. She smiled and said she would let him have the fun and led me off to build with her brother. 

It was a moment. Somewhat a right of passage perhaps.

As I had watched this toddler smiling up at me and throwing all of himself into the fun of it, I had one of those flashback moments where I could see Graham in the same spot.

He used to grin and cavort as the ping pong balls bounced around. And here we were, a decade later with his baby sister acting all mature and letting a little kid do what she has always loved. 

I remembered the first time we had G with us and you could tell he was too old for it.

You could see him wistfully attempting to join in and it was poignant to see that the time had passed for him to do so. And here I could see the first twinges of the countdown for the beginning of the end for Caroline.

Thankfully, we have a couple of years, give or take, before she has outgrown it all.

I tucked it deep in the overcrowded chest of treasures in my heart and knew that this was some sort of significant moment. 

Yesterday I took her back to the children’s museum, this time with a pal from school. It worked out that we could meet her there after her dance class and Caroline loves the museum so she didn’t mind a repeat the very next day. 

As the girls sat eating a snack, I heard a loud noise and looked behind me only to see workman dismantling the combine. We had just sat in it the day before. Caroline’s eyes were wide and so were mine. 

From there we watched as various pieces were carried off. A large partition now separated the rest of the museum from the very place we had stood 24 hours before. 

Someone told us they are rearranging exhibits and things will be moved to different locations. As Caroline pointed to things that were no longer where they used to be, we both did our share of remembering things that happened in those now empty places. 

We laughed remembering the time the large air movement exhibit that sucked scarves and pompoms around and blew them out also pulled the splint off of little Joel’s finger. He had broken it catching a basketball and sure enough, as he stuffed the scarves in, his splint joined the party. 

There was much commotion that day as we had to enlist the help of a museum employee to unhinge the tubing and extract the splint from where it was stuck at the very top. 

So many memories and I had to take some moments to realize the gift of the previous day before the familiar displays were dismantled.

God had whispered to drink it in as our Sweet Caroline shared her love for the buckets of balls with a little one coming behind her, and for once I listened. 

Change. 

It is hard. 

Often we miss the richness of the “just before” until it is past. 

I am thankful I was given one last tangible moment of memories all mixed in a lovely patter that I can hold in my heart.