Rear View

I can remember years of driving to and from work, to shop, to family events, to church. Years of looking in the rear view mirror. Most days and nights all I would see was an empty backseat, maybe a few items strewn across the seat, but it was always empty.

For many years, especially when all my friends started having babies, I would look in the rear view mirror while I was driving and imagine a car seat, a little me or him, riding back there, rattling toys and cooing. After a few of those years, that image was almost too painful and I tried to block it out completely.

One May day, a phone call changed my life and I started looking in that rear view mirror again, imagining a car seat and a sweet little girl rattling her toys and smiling at me. A few months later, that image in my head became truth and reality and soon I was driving around town, gazing into that same rear view mirror, watching with complete amazement as she slept, or laughed or smiled at me.

The car seat has changed from an infant carrier to a toddler seat to now a booster seat for a growing, growing, growing five year old girl. I still love to gaze in my rear view mirror and see her sweet face there because in the words of James Taylor, "whenever I see her smiling face, I have to smile myself!"

This morning I dropped her off in the car line at school and as I drove away I looked in that rear view mirror. My backseat only holding an empty car seat, but I could see her, standing on the sidewalk in front of the school, waving and smiling as I drove off and she walked inside. The scene is changing once again in my rear view mirror and yet in my mind, no matter how old she gets, or how tall, or independent, whenever I look in that rear view mirror, all I see is a sweet, smiling, chubby faced baby girl.

I wonder if she will ever know how much I have treasured having her in the back seat to look at in that rear view mirror.

Living Happily in the Moment!
Bev