A healthy dose of perspective

Everyone who gets caught up in the day-to-day grind of raising small children desperately needs someone to put things in perspective for them.

My perspective comes courtesy of a family I've known a long time. I'll call them the Fleishmans.

My husband and I met the Fleishmans when we were college students. They were in the early stages of raising a family, with two boys and a baby girl. For four years, we watched the kids grow and develop. They moved away, and when we visited them a few years later their children had turned into completely different people.

Then we moved to the same state, so we were able to check in from time to time and catch the occasional soccer game. Each time we saw them, we'd comment about how quickly they were growing up.

Most significantly, there were the annual holiday pictures. Each December there it would be in the mail, the family photo, the kids another year older, looking less and less like the preschoolers I remembered from...wasn't that just a few months ago?

After we added a baby girl to our family of two boys, and moved once again to yet another state, a card arrived in the mail from the Fleishmans. It was a graduation announcement. Apparently their oldest son had--get this--GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL!

It all happened so fast.

Perspective. Without fail, it makes the tears well up. Then, it makes me go sit on the floor and play with trains. Have a tea party. Give an extra-long hug.

Or take a photo of my own, and try to freeze one fleeting moment in time.