In the blink of an eye

In the blink of an eye.

That's how long it takes for life to change.

With one phone call, we went from a leisurely dinner to a white-knuckle drive across Houston to see our daughter-in-law and granddaughter in the hospital emergency room.

Later that week, we found ourselves back at the hospital to welcome our grandson. We thought his arrival would be a quiet affair; but in the blink of an eye, that home delivery turned into an unexpected, middle-of-the-night trip to the hospital.

But those worries were forgotten the minute we held young James in our arms, everybody safe and sound, and we knew we'd passed a significant milestone in our family.

Big events are tough to miss. They're anticipated for weeks, circled on the calendar and then heralded with numerous emails and phone calls. But they're over rather quickly, remembered through photos or videos.

It's the filler days where life provides some of the most significant moments of our lives, and we often miss what's happening because we're busy waiting for the red-letter events.

We impatiently endured our teenage years because we were waiting for our 21st birthday. Adults were the ones having fun, we thought, so we hurried our way through those years, often forgetting to savor the firsts that only the teenage years bring – our first driver's license, our first kiss and our first official paycheck.

Then we became young adults, and we spent so much time establishing ourselves in the work world that we often missed the nuances that formed us into adults.

We don't remember the day we threw away our tie-dyed T-shirts in exchange for button-down Oxfords or cleared away the stuffed animals from our bed and replaced them with coordinating pillows.

But those were the significant moments when we crossed from one phase of our lives into another. Those phases often sneak up on us and are gone before we know it.

Parenthood especially provides so many memorable moments, and we can immediately recall the milestones of our children's lives – their first step, their first day of school and their high school graduations.

But I forgot to take my time during some of the most significant days of my sons' childhood – what their faces looked like while playing in the dirt or sleeping peacefully in their beds at night. I witnessed those events, but I didn't appreciate the fleeting sweetness of parenthood.

In the blink of an eye, they were babies and then they were grown and on their own. Now I watch my grown sons as they talk with each other, not for what they're saying but memorizing how they sound when they're laughing and how their eyes sparkle when they're having a good time.

I watch my granddaughter skip and listen to her sing so I'll remember what her voice sounded like when she was a happy, carefree little girl. I'm watching my grandson as he adjusts to the outside world and committing to memory those first smiles.

For sure, I'll remember the milestones in our family's lives, but I want to make sure I'm paying attention to the seemingly mundane because those moments are the defining times.

In the blink of an eye, life can go from happy to tragic, confusing to clear or worried to reassured. We remember what happens after we blink, but often little of what happened before.

For the second half of my life, I'm going to try and not miss as much as I did the first half because life isn't just about the red-letter days.

Life happens in the every-day moment, when we're least prepared and changes in the blink of an eye.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.