Oh-Bla-Di

I’ve talked about them before but we discovered a new (to us) band last year called Rabbit! and we listen to them several days a week.  In our minivan, Rabbit! is called “New Yusic” and probably always will be.  We were listening to it again last week and I finally figured out why “Camera” is one of my favorite songs on their Connect the Dots album…it perfectly sums up the vague parenting feeling that it’s all slipping by too fast to capture it.

I wish I was a camera
I would take a picture of
All the small and subtle stuff
Everything we can’t give up
I’ll keep my memories all intact
Of how we love and how we laugh
I wanna be a camera
I wanna be a photograph

I want it all to just slow down long enough that I capture all the little things that make my babies special, the things we swear we’ll never forget but that fade by the time the terrible two’s have passed.

I wish I was a photograph
Of times and places in the past
The truth is every picture’s old
Taking seconds or a year ago
This way we could stay the same
Let the world around us start to change
I wish i was a photograph
Or maybe just a picture frame

The time is so fleeting that, seconds after something happens, it’s all a memory.  Babies roll over for the first time only once; only one step is the first one.  Every milestone, every change moves them farther along their path.

A box and a pinhole set in the window to capture the path of the sun
You can hold on to lighting right when it’s striking, if you keep the shutter open
Digging through the thumbnail proofs
The ones I keep are ones of you

Maybe if we set things up just right – start a blog, take thousands of photos, terabytes of videos – we can remember it all or at least archive it for later reference?  How do you capture the way they smell when they’ve been outside to play on a spring day or just after a cozy winter bath?

I wish I was a picture frame
The kind that you can get engraved
One that says “I love you Jill,”
One that says, “I miss you Jane.”
Now I know you won’t get scratched
Underneath a pane of glass
I wanna be a picture frame
I wanna be a photograph

I want to bottle up their lives and memories and put them under glass, so nothing will hurt them or tarnish them.  Something this precious should be protected.  The frame would say, “I love you” so that no one would ever doubt that the protecting was all simply for love of those kiddos.

I wish I was a photograph
So nobody would have to ask
Who was in your high school play?
Or, What was on your wedding cake?
I could be a college crush
I could be an image of
How we live and how we love
I wish I was a camera

How we live and how we love
I wish I was a camera

All the little moments -the ones to review, the ones to relive – I want to record the times they can’t remember so that my kids can look back and know.  So they can see how they were happy; so they can see how much they were (are) loved.  I want them to remember, through my own memory, how each day, development, word, deed, and thought was cherished (even the crummy ones).  I want to be an image of that feeling for them; I want them to know how we lived (for them) and loved (for them).