This past weekend, after loading the twins up for a family trip into town, my husband and I settled into our seats and promptly started bickering over the music on the radio. He wanted to hear rock, but no sub-genre of Rock in my Pandora library was satisfactory. We finally agreed (reluctantly) on Bryan Adams' "Summer of 69," and as I belted out the lyrics along with the song, I ruminated over the words I was hearing. This verse, in particular, gave me pause:
"Oh, when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Yeah, I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life."
After a few minutes of silence I said, "How unfortunate for him," mostly to myself, but my husband heard, too. He asked me what I was talking about, and I told him, "How unfortunate for Bryan Adams that that summer were the best days of his life."
"What do you mean," he asked.
"I mean, how sad is it that the best days of his life were spent playing in a band and chasing a superficial kind of love? Because those days were fun, don't get me wrong, but they weren't the best I've ever had. Not even close. But right now, navigating parenthood with you, these are the best days of my life."
I think that so often in life we get caught up in the nostalgia that the past offers, that we forget the best days of our lives are the ones we are living right now. My hope for the future is that through each stage of life, I am so immersed in the present that I can't view those days as any other than the best.
