How to Miss it.
“Quick! Quick!”
I attempt to hustle her along. Her warm pudgy hand is held tightly in mine as we rush through the mall ticking one last thing off my to-do list. Her tiny, clunky, pink winter boots are hitting the linoleum floor, echoing a pattern indicative of the speed they were not meant to keep.
“Quick! Quick!”
It’s still a singsongy voice as we are making good time and will be sure to have time to hit that last stop at the grocery store for a few supper ingredients before the bus arrives home carrying her brother.
It was a work day, but circumstances would have it that daycare didn’t pan out for the day and she came to the office with me for the morning before running a few work related errands around town and then home. She’d been fantastically well behaved and I was relieved.
“Even if it was work related, how often do I get to enjoy just one of them by themselves?” I think to myself as we duck into another store. Empty-handed a few minutes later we are walk-trotting back to the frosty covered front doors separating us from this blustery winter’s day.
“Mama!” She stops abruptly and points.
“Quick! Quick!” I sing back to her and tug on her hand.
“Mama!” She refuses to budge and points to the Photo Booth a few steps away. “Please!!!! It will be so fun!”
I can taste my “Quick! Quick! We’ve got to go. We don’t want to waste that kind of money” reply sitting on the tip of my tongue and then I remember.
I remember one Saturday morning when I was hustling about my kitchen tidying, cleaning, cooking, and a friend sent me a text message picture of her and her father in a Photo Booth 30 year ago. It was the first picture I’d seen of him and I paused to really look at their faces, their silly faces, just truly enjoying each other. Cherished.
“Let’s do it!” I smile down into her squishy little eyes and tug her forward.
“Yes!” she masks her surprise with a smile and a giggle.
We slide into the booth and pull the black curtain shut. Listening to the instructions I slip my $5 bill into the slot- yes five whole dollars for 2 copies of 4 pictures! Even my bad Math realizes this isn’t a “deal” but then we giggle and laugh and she tells me how to pose. Cherished.
Moments later we’re waiting outside the booth for our strips of shiny photo paper to come sliding down into the metal slot. Clutching them in her pink-knit mittened hands, those tiny, clunky, pink winter boots are hitting the linoleum floor in a dance pattern all their own, just as they should be. She tells me how fun I am and how much she loves me and how she’ll keep those pictures “just forever” and I wonder if it might possibly be so, or at least 30 years.
And I realize I nearly missed it.
