The Golden Treasury

 

There was a moment today when my wife was rolling on the floor laughing with our 3 year old and the baby joined in giggling from his high chair. He wasn't being played with or obviously included but he knew there was fun and he was part of it. I wanted to nail that moment down, or preserve it in aspic or press it between the pages of an album. But before I knew it the moment had gone, the baby resumed smearing yoghurt all over his face and the 3 year old his demands for the iPad.

'Sharenting' and baby spam is a demonstration of parental desire to share joy in children with the outside world. Some parents give in to an impulse to record every second of their children's lives in a bid to arrest the passage of time. Obviously, audio, video and photographic records of family times are important but they are vastly less important than what they are seeking to capture, which is time itself.

'Treasure every moment' and 'It goes so fast' are both trite pieces of parental advice but they're no less true for that. The word treasure carries for me a particularly powerful symbolism. Our shared joy in the kitchen was just a moment but it was a moment of genuine family communion. All taking pleasure in the same thing at the same time.

That moment is like an ounce of gold and although the moment passes the value of it never does. In fact that ounce of gold, whether you realise it or not, is securely deposited in the individual and collective memories of the whole family. And as the days, months and years pass every such moment is added to the balance creating a golden treasury. That treasury will end up holding more value in the family's heart than any bank account or investment portfolio ever could.

When sadness, tragedy, illness, grief and bereavement come, and come most surely will, then is the time to draw on those reserves. In fortunate families those reserves will be full and sustaining, in others they will be scant and unconsoling. You can not pay money into that treasury and you can not employ others to pay into it for you.

Real presence in the lives of small children comes at a real cost, of sleep, of patience, of intellectual stimulation but it is also the time for gathering those ounces of gold and, like a prospector panning for gold above San Francisco, it's not gifted to you it has to be worked for. But the conditions are ripe. Your children when they are small don't just want you in their lives they need you in their lives.

A time will come when children want distance and independence. Gathering gold then is difficult and, like any investment, will accumulate much less interest for being made late in the day. A day of fun in a small child's life seems an eternity because their life is so short, a day of fun in the life of a 20 year old is but one of thousands of days.

'Do the work' has been something of a catchphrase this year and it is one that could not be more aptly applied to bringing up children, that is how you become rich in reminiscence.