Insignificantly significant

The older I get, the less significant I  feel, the more trivial my worries seem, and the fuzzier my memories become.  I wonder why I ever believed what grades my kids got mattered, or why it was so damn important for them to clean their plates.  The day-to-day moments of life with kids have all just melted into a giant conglomeration of individual moments, events, and flashbacks, almost impossible to distinguish what happened when and where and to which kid.  My recollection of my life from ages 25-50 is like that PlayStation game, Katamari, where you push around a sticky ball and collect any items you see. The more stuff you roll up onto the ball, the bigger the ball gets, and you can then pick up larger items--even cars and whole cities.  

Somewhere in my katamari are potty training successes and failures, first steps, emergency room visits, report cards, first dates, countless military deployments, arguments over whose turn it is to do the dishes, admonitions to clean up rooms, and countless other moments, the significance of which in life as it is today escapes me.  I try to recall.  I really do.  But when I try, one (or all) of my adult children challenge my memory recall skills with a roll of their eyes and an “oh mom.”  And God forbid I share a story with their kids without first clearing it with my daughters.  I mean seriously?  Give me some credit here—I am not going to embarrass, shame, or expose horrible secrets or bad behaviors to my grandkids.  It’s as important to me as it to them for my daughter/their mom to be seen in a good light. 

All of this leads me to my point.  (You were hoping I’d get here eventually right?).  Which is:  all of those memories, that ball of stuff collected over the years, it makes up my life, a lifetime of big and little and minuscule moments in time.  Some good, some not, some horribly painful and quite a few breathtakingly joyful—but every single thing in that glob is both gloriously insignificant and significant.  It’s who I am.  Who I was.  Who I’m becoming. And why does it matter if I don’t remember the gerbil’s name or whether I never apologized for missing a 6th grader’s basketball game?  Why do I beat myself up for things I said or did or didn’t do when I cannot go back and redo those moments?  I cannot separate it all and line it all up in a nice neat continuum in sequential order.  My memory is not capable of that. 

I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night.  

But...and here’s the kicker...I can make new memories and tell new stories and sit back and be a part of my daughters’ memories, and my grandkids’ recollections, as they create their own balls of stuff, collecting moments and treasured points in time.  

I cannot think of any greater joy and privilege than to be rolled up in their  ball of life. 

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"  Jeremiah 29:11