A Passing Moment

Sunday, 1:27 pm January 4, 2009 was an exact moment that was symbolic of my life right now.

After a morning spent at the rink, then rushing to church, rushing back home to feed kids and put on a load of laundry, I was heading North on the highway with a van full of boys. Some my own, some friends, driving a son to a birthday party, where he could play hockey with his friends on an outdoor rink.

I passed a little silver car heading South.

In that car was my husband whom I hadn't seen since Thursday when he left town with a child of ours to head to a hockey tournament for four days. And now, without being able to stop in between, he was heading south, passing through our town, to pick up another son who had just finished another hockey game and needed a ride home from his coach's house.

We smiled, waved and kept driving. And for however frustrating it was at that moment, we laughed. These are crazy years. Busy, intense, crazy years of parenting active children. But I know, always, at the back of my mind, that in a few short years - certainly less than a decade - I will have nothing to do on a Sunday afternooon but stare across the couch at the same face I had been staring at all week. And maybe then I will miss hockey?