That is the problem with moments.

If they were minutes or hours or days it would be easier to fill them up with things to remember.

If a moment lasted longer you could gather your wits about you

and have some warning that the moment would matter

because you could see it unfolding

and you could hold the corners down.

But we all know that moments are tiny things.

In fact, no one knows exactly how long a moment lasts.

Here and gone before you can think a thought

or reach for your camera.

*

Oh, Millie Rose.

What a sweetheart.

Most of the time, when she is out of her own home,

she is quiet.

Quiet and observant.

She prefers her mother or father or a sibling

but more and more she is willing to come to Grandma

and when she does, I stretch the moment to a longer moment

or even to a minute if I can.

Millie’s mother actually took the camera from around my neck

and gave this moment to me as a gift.

*

Who knows what color her eyes might be ?

Sometimes they look black and then brown

and even dark blue or green

Her hair is looking more and more curly like

her sister Oli’s hair.

If you can get her to smile,

she will show you three new teeth:

one on the top and two on the bottom.

Today, she took my finger

and walked me into the playroom,

leaving Mommy behind in the kitchen.

That was a first.

*

The hands belong to Grandpa and he had a “moment “, too.

He reached out and she laughed and reached back.

She did so with a smile before tucking her little head

into her mother’s neck.

Millie is one.

She is either “just one” or “already one”

depending on how you view life’s moments

as either fast or slow.

For me they are faster and faster.

I don’t know if my life is full of moments, minutes, hours, days or years.

That is why I have to pay attention to the smallest of things.

-Grandma-