Someday

Kathleen was pulling books of a shelf today, and I saw one I hadn't seen in a while, one that came as a gift soon after she was born, one that made me cry. Just looking at it, I felt my tears welling up. Kathleen looked at me and laughed, and I smiled back.

Then, instead of putting the book back on the shelf, I opened it and read it. And then I did cry. It is a lovely little book called Someday. It begins with a mother talking to her small child, telling him or her about how she counted their toes when they were a baby. It tells things the she has done with the child and then moves into the things she will watch her child will do someday.

I cried for Henry and his lost somedays, for all the things he will never do, all the things I will never watch him do. And I cried in wonder at the potential there in front of me on the floor, for all Kathleen's somedays, for all the things I hope the see her do. For all the somedays that seem to be every day right now as she is changing so fast.

The heaviness of those tears is lingering with me tonight as I think of the somedays lost, but I smile with those tears thinking of the somedays yet to be. Ah, this endless tangle of sweet and bitter.