Note to self: The 'Good Old Days' are right now

My wife and I are in the midst of the Good Old Days.

I'm very aware of this fact. For all the time, energy and money we expend on our children, these are still clearly the Good Old Days. I know that one day we will look back and think, "Wow, those were great times. So much fun."

And we'll be right. These ARE fun times. Of course, by then we'll have blocked out all the unpleasant parts because that's what we, as human beings, do. We zero in on the fun times and mostly forget the bad stuff so that we can look back at a certain period in our lives and think, "That was the perfect time. I wish I could go back to that."

If one day they figure out time travel and we do manage to come back to the year 2012, I'll probably be shocked to remember that:

* Every time I washed the kitchen floor, somebody in the house would immediately manage to spill juice on it. Every. Single. Time.

* No one would ever turn the lights out when they left a room, thus allowing us to set world records for Highest Electric Bill in a Single-Family House.

* Whenever we turned around, there would be yet another school fee to pay. Books, sports, other extracurriculars. Whatever it was, we had to pay for it.

* We spent a lot of time worrying about how we were going to pay for college, when in fact the common sense portion of our brains told us that we would survive the experience no matter how much it seemed like it was going to kill us.

And on and on. Selective memory is a wonderful thing. It's what allows women to have more than one baby, for example. Five times I watched Terry pass small human beings (painfully) out of her body. And each time I thought, "OK, no way she's going to want to go through nine months of that kind of misery plus labor again." And each time I was wrong...until the last time, of course. She would forget about the negative aspects of childbirth and instead focus on the miracle of bringing another life into this world, and boom, two years or so later she would be pregnant again.

I always try to remind myself that for all the trouble of the life we're living now, we're smack dab in the middle of an undeniably awesome experience. We're in that part of life where every week seems to bring a new milestone or accomplishment. After awhile you start to take it for granted.

I take for granted going to watch my kids play soccer or run track. But one day, that will be gone. I take for granted things like school concerts, awards assemblies and first cars. In a few years, they will all just be memories. Of course, there will come a time when I can relive those experiences through grandchildren, and I know that will be great, but I can't imagine it will be quite the same.

So for now I'm pretty much just hanging on and trying to enjoy as much of the ride as I can. Sometimes I do a good job of it and appreciate what God has given me. Other times I get caught up in the whirlwind of activity and let time pass by almost unnoticed.

But either way, the Good Old Days really are good.

(P.S. Happy 80th birthday today to my mom, Kathryn, who I hope looks back on this writer's childhood as her own Good Old Days!)