in the fullness of time.

Yesterday when we were going to bed I said I really wanted to live my Saturday over again. Eben was taken aback because he thought I meant I had regrets--that I wanted to re-do the day and erase the way I'd lived. But that's not what I meant. I had this tangible sense of all the possible Saturdays I could have had, all the infinite choices I could have taken and lived, and I wanted to experience each of them in succession. I wanted the evening where I stayed up late sewing and finished our bedroom curtains, and the evening where I made a gourmet dinner, and the evening where Eben and I took the baby monitor out in the garden and drank champagne and watched the rain fall while we listened to Monroe sleeping, and also the evening where I went to bed at 8:45 and slept like a log. Not to mention all the mornings and afternoons I want to have with Monroe on this exact day--the day when she is seventeen and 1/4 months old and calling her butt her "button," humming Old McDonald, and learning to point out her eyebrows and her chin.

In today's Gospel something was said to have happened "in the fullness of time" and I thought the odd phrase captured a lot about how I am feeling. My time is so full, so crowded with valuable possibilities. I am grateful for all of it, but I regret the necessity of making decisions that cut off other possibilities.

Living this life is like reading a very good book--I can't wait to turn each page, but I never want the book to end. Sometimes when I am reading a delicious book, I intentionally delay myself in a fantastic part--I get up to make a cup of tea or do some housework or some other task that does not require focused attention. The mindless task lets me linger in the world of the book and extends one scene or moment until it is fully amalgamated into my consciousness and I am ready to continue in the story. That's what I wanted last night. To just stop, and sit, and process Saturday from the sidelines, outside of life. But instead I did some chores and hung out with Eben and went to sleep. And today I woke up and here I am on a new page, a bit haunted by the feeling that this is all going a little faster than I want it to.