What do you see?

A few days ago I went walking with Mia around our neighborhood. There's a huge hill behind our house, and as soon as Mia saw the hill, the first notion in her brain was to climb it. She wasn't satisfied until we reached the top; "Higher! Up, up and up!"

While we were climbing I was thinking- she's not alone in her instinctive drive to go up the first climb she saw. Why do we all have that same drive as my two-year-old? To climb up things that are bigger than us? Today, I'm thinking the reason is perspective. Maybe we want to see more than anyone else. Maybe we just want to see for ourselves.

We got to the top and turned around. She immediately wondered which home was hers. (Isn't that another thing we all do?) I tried to figure which one, so I could point it out to her and maybe make her feel a little more comfortable about being so seemingly far away.

Coming up on one year with the twins, I feel like I just rounded the corner on the foothill, turned back to glimpse my house, and can't make it out. I know my memories of the twins' newborn days are there, and if I wanted to it would just take a minute to recall. But it's not so easy as before. I need pictures to really remember. These babies aren't babies anymore. I can't hold both of them peacefully under each cheek with room to spare for little Mia on my lap. I miss something about that smallness. But I don't think I'd trade going back to stay in that sweet moment for the knowlege and experience all five of us have gained since. The last year has set me on the beginning of a path that for the first time, I can honestly see myself following for the rest of my life.

I was feeling the soft skin on their hands today and lamenting that someday their hands will look like mine, and they won't be around to hold whenever I happen to reach for them. I'm hoping when it comes to that time, I'll still feel the same way that I did on that walk. That I wouldn't trade seeing the house for the skyline.