.:.when time slips away.:.

This has been a long day proceeding a wonderful week.

After seven hours of waiting in an airport to eventually end up on a bus in order to take our first of two flights + a 4 hour drive I find myself heavy with thoughts.

I'm not quite sure how to begin or where to start, if a beginning even exists, because my heart is wrapped up in years of moments that tingle with strong emotion.

For the last week my boys and I have spent our first long family vacation with my dad and my step mom in Ketchum (Idaho, not Oklahoma ;)I'm 27.
Seems irrelevant but valid in this case.
For 23 years I didn't have a relationship with my dad-I've said it before, I know.
One of my first fights with my now-husband was over my broken relationship with my dad.
While he desired to marry a woman that was whole I believed he had no right to speak into that part of my life.
Four years later, it is because of him that I am able to see my dad--that I am able to talk to him.
It is because of my husband acting as a bridge that I cry every time my Dad and I part.
EVERY TIME.
The only way I can explain it is that this overwhelming need to never lose another moment washes over me.
I weep not for the moments I lost necessarily but for all of the present I want to build.
I don't want any memory I make now to end but to keep going.

As we hopped on the bus today and headed to an airport sans-fog
I wept into my shirt sleeve and fought to silence the gasping breaths amongst total strangers.
When I was calm I asked my husband...
Do you think it's worse to have a friendship with your parents NOW if it meant not knowing them as a child
OR
Is it worse to ALWAYS be a child to the parents who you know and raised you in your youth?
I don't really believe there is an answer to that question.
What I do know is my husband I struggle immensely with the parents who raised us.
In their eyes, we are always children.
We are never adult enough to make our own decisions without a heaping spoonful of guilt to salt the batter.
We are never free of who we were as a child, but permanently frozen in who they knew us to be.
What I do know is the despite the absence of my biological father for whatever truths there truly are
I had a wonderful man I also call Dad raise me.
And lastly, what I know is the type of relationship I want with my son.
Ironically, I desire the relationship with my son that I have now with the Dad I am just now getting to know.
To him, I am an individual worth knowing. I am both old and new. I am a baby and I am an adult.
Ultimately, I am someone he doesn't want to lose again.
This makes me valuable
not for how I can fulfill him
but for what he wants to learn about me.
I want eyes to see my son as an individual.
I want a heart who loves my son for who he is now and who he will become.
I want unending encouragement for his dreams.
I want endless love for him during his trials and his triumphs.
I want to let him go when I have to.
I want to follow him where he goes, not ask him to stay where I am.

All of the things I want somehow come from all I lost but have now found.