Lights, Camera, Action...

While I am unbelievably busy today, I've had something on my mind and wanted to put it here, before the feeling passes. (Don't worry, I'll wipe all the goo off of it first.) It's one of those things that you can hold in your heart indefinitely, you know what I mean?

Yesterday evening, my girls came back from a weekend with their dad. They seemed to have had a good time and everyone was all bubbly and upbeat. Highlander's friend Bane had dropped by (I'll let him get into the details on his own blog, should he so choose; they really aren't relevant to this story), and I'd cooked a big Sunday dinner, as I usually do when the girls are coming back from their dad's. I'm always so excited for them to be home and it's one of the ways I express that, I guess. Highlander had invited his friend to stay and we all had a nice time together.

As Highlander had filled the kiddie pool with fresh water early in the day (in anticipation of [Kid 3]'s arrival), after dinner, I asked her if she wanted to slip on her suit and go play in the water for a bit. She was tickled to do so and I excused myself to go sit on the porch while she did just that. It couldn't have been three minutes before Highlander and his friend joined me there.

I was sitting in one of the chairs on the porch, while Highlander was sitting on the porch swing. He was watching [Kid 3] intently. At one point, asking if she wanted some pool toys and trotting them out for her, before returning to his perch in the swing.

The look on his face said a million things. It said contentment and bliss and pride and joy and happiness most of all. I'm afraid I'll be completely incapable of adequately describing it, but it's as if I imagine a tiny movie camera inside his head, capturing the moments sometimes. Perhaps because he's a writer. Perhaps because he's a very sentimental guy. I'm not sure. But, sometimes, you can see him remembering something, even as it's happening.

Watching [Kid 3] splashing around in her little pool, was one of those moments. And I could see it all over his face. He wasn't talking. He was just watching. With that adorable look on his face. The smile. The twinkling eyes. Taking it all in and filing it in a place that, years from now, he'll look back to. I realize that we all do that. But, we don't do it that way.

What I mean is that I have lots of memories of my kids. Memories that I treasure. But I don't think I made a conscious effort, with any of those memories, to mark them as they were being made. I don't remember ever thinking, as I was involved in a situation, "This is something that I want to always remember," or that "I don't ever want to forget how my kids look while they're building a snowman." I do want to remember those things, but I'm generally so caught up in the moment, I don't think much about the relationship I'll have with that memory in the future. Highlander does. Not constantly, but often.

To see the look on his face, while you know that he's marking some special moment that he'll play back years from now in his mind, is touching. It's MORE than touching, it's intimate. It's intimate at a level I've never experienced before.

He loves these kids. I mean it. He absolutely loves them. And don't think I don't realize how lucky I am to be a divorced mom of three who meets a man who so eagerly steps into a relationship with a woman in that situation. And who does so with such a tender and generous heart. Because I do realize it. I realize it everyday.

But, I have to say that it is the most splendiferous feeling to know that these little mini movies that he is making in his head...these little featurettes of me and the girls...are something I've been able to give him. So, those times, when I glance over and see that look on his face...the look that tells me that years from now, there will be a time when he'll conjure up the images of [Kid 3] pouring water over her head in a tiny blue plastic pool, and he'll remember this very moment...are simply priceless to me.

I'm sure he'll have to remind me about them when I'm old(er) and gray(er). Luckily, I know he'll be able to recount them in intricate detail. Me, I'm just enjoying watching him as he records them. All those little moments that I so easily take for granted every day are each such treasures for him. It's an amazing gift to see how special these little fragments of time are in his life, and to watch as so many of them are recorded safely away, awaiting a time when he can tell [Kid 3]'s daughter how HE used to watch her mother splashing around in a tiny blue plastic pool when she was just six years old.

So...when I see that look come over his face...I can't help but just stare at him and smile. Getting a little misty, knowing that his mental camera is recording yet another happy memory for him of our life together, but totally sucked into watching him as he does it. You know me. I'm always a sucker for a happy ending...;)