Yesterday I received a transmission from the 2030s

Orion’s been home sick a few times lately. Because my work schedule is more flexible I’m the one who gets to stay home with him. It’s easy for me to get a little tired of this, especially as Jenny has parent conferences right now so I’m doing extra-long childcare shifts (15 hrs.) with a (slightly) sick kid, and no car.

I lack Jenny’s talent for getting Orion to fall back asleep at naptime so I generally wind up holding him and rocking in the chair while he falls asleep ... and then sitting motionless for [X] minutes while he finishes his nap. Well when this happened about an hour into O’s nap yesterday, [X] turned out to be about 180. That’s a long time to sit pretty much unmoving, upright, with 25 pounds of kid sleeping on your lap. It could get a little boring.

But when this happened yesterday I had the good fortune to receive, at that exact moment, a memory transmitted backward in time from myself in ten or twenty years. Holding my napping toddler son while my legs fall asleep seems painfully boring at the moment it’s happening, but apparently it’ll become one of my favorite memories. And someday I’ll wish more than I can imagine right now to relive that feeling for even a few minutes.