Glimpsing this sweet moment last night did all sorts of funny things to my heart.

Because most days lately, this swing hangs empty.

Yet it feels like only a heartbeat ago when, one summer evening, the four of us crafted it from a sturdy plank and our old climbing rope down in the barn. After we strung it up in the maple tree, it was rarely vacant.

The speed at which life and childhood unfolds is ever accelerating, and some days I’m just barely hanging on. There is such profound beauty in their growing, but it is tinged with a whisper of grief.

Because nothing has shaped me more than this chapter – never have I found more important work than this.

Never has life been more real, more delicious, more brimming with magic, or more raw.

I’m not sure I’m ready to let that go.

And I wonder… who will they be when they’re grown?

And, in the same breath, who will I?