There is this brief scene toward the end of the show Parenthood, it might even be in the finale, not sure, that just wrenches my heart.

   The show's story line centers around one family, Zeek (i know that seems spelled wrong, but that's the way they spell it!) and Camille and their four children, Adam, Sarah, Julia and Crosby (and their spouses and children) and the story lines that weave throughout all of their individual lives.   But that scene that just gets me toward the end, is when Zeek and Camille are driving around, house shopping for their down-sized, retirement-friendly home.

   It is hard for them (and for fans of the show everywhere) to think of them leaving "the home place".  The house with twinkle lights in the backyard and the big table that hosted so many family dinners and the rooms that were their children's growing up, and everything else that made that place a home and filled to the brim with memories.  But it was becoming too much work for them to maintain, and they knew it.  And so there they were, driving around, and they drive by this house that has a swing set and a slide and various items scattered all over the front yard.  Bikes, balls, toys, etc, and these two boys come tearing around the corner, I think they were maybe playing with water guns?  And the mom comes to the front door of the house to tell them to come in, and her belly is huge and round with child #3, and Zeek and Camille just smile wistfully at each other, remembering when that was them.

   And maybe the reason my heart twisted so much is because I was in that same place, right then, at that moment.  Our two girls tucked into their beds sleeping, and my pregnant-with-#3-self stretched out onto the couch, sniffling into tissues at the emotion and drama that was the ending of that show.  I couldn't put my finger on what I was feeling, but it was all just too much....watching a family's lives unfold over the span of those seasons, seeing the children grow up in what seemed like moments and move on to have their own lives.  And catching this glimpse of Randy and myself, old and graying and thinking about "down-sizing" and remembering those distant days of old when our house was full of noise and toys and our heads were full of plans and dreams and my womb was full of babies.

It was all too much.

    It was as if right then, in that moment, I knew.  I just KNEW.  These are the best days of our lives.  It's not that we won't have any more good days, because God willing, we will.  It's not that the future is a downward spiral, just getting worse and worse and sadder and lonelier until we die.  God willing it's not.  But it's just that these are the moments that our memories and our hearts will always catch on.  That fleeting, exhausting, magical, draining, beautiful time....the pouring out of our time and our energy and our bodies to something bigger than ourselves.  The bringing of life into the world and the nurturing, raising, and shaping of those people before releasing them into the world to go learn, live, love, and bring lives of their OWN into the world.

   And maybe it's because I'm pregnant now, I don't know, but I just cannot seem to stop thinking about that.  About how our lives truly are nothing but a vapor, here one day and gone the next, and I feel a little desperate to squeeze it all tight in my hands and not let a single grain of sand slip through my fingers until I've somehow frozen all of time, and I can just revel it in for a while.  This is it.  THESE are the days that we will look back on and think of as "the good ol' days".

And I don't want to miss a single thing.