MOMENTS, MINUTES AND THE TRUE ESSENCE OF A LIFE WELL-LIVED

My mom has requested a quiet 80th birthday. I don’t know what the big deal is, she tells me. It’s just a number.

Well, it's sort of is a big deal, I tell her.

I don’t tell her that I googled the average lifespan of a woman and it’s 79 years old. I don’t remind her that some of the friends who keep asking her what she wants to do for her birthday will not be alive to celebrate her 90th birthday, maybe not even her 85th, assuming my mom is alive to celebrate these future birthdays – and they want to be with her, while they can be.

My mom doesn’t like to be the center of attention. She’s never needed to ring in a decade with bells and whistles – and maybe this year, especially, a party to acknowledge a life well-lived would be too close for comfort when it comes to embracing her mortality – when she could slip into the 80s unnoticed, with a book on her lap, a re-run of Legally Blonde blaring from the television set and her husband (my dad) snoring on the couch next to her.

It doesn’t have to be a big deal, she insists – and I know to agree, which I do.

People need a place to put their love, I tell mom. You just have to direct the energy and give us a way to do something – it could be anything.

She thinks for a minute and then agrees to let me and my sister gather the family for a “super informal” luncheon at a restaurant in the park, a room with a view of the big oak trees that she loves. If people can’t come, we don’t change the date. It’s just for whomever can be there. And no one needs to say anything, she reiterates.

You want it quiet, I say. I get it. We will keep it quiet.

And so, for the past few weeks, I have quietly been collecting photographs of my mom’s life – specifically, images of my mom with her children – her two daughters, two grandsons and three granddaughters – to create a hardcover birthday book. My mom’s motherhood is the defining experience of her life. I know this without asking her what defines your life? Motherhood is easy to see in pictures, so I’m feeling good about the book being a silent, and vibrant, celebration of my mom.

And just to make sure she gets the message, every few pages, each of us, her children, have written a note to my mom – a favorite memory, a gratitude, an acknowledgement of what makes my mom special. We have created a place to put our love – and mom will enter her 80s with a gift that is a portal to this place, whenever she wants to be there.

This birthday book project is uploaded to my computer screen, and I’m making the final edits. It seems impossible to distill these years, these relationships, into a handful of moments – and yet, I do. We do.

Moments.

For all of the time that my mom has lived on this Earth, for the decades that I have known her, for the hours we have spent together, it comes down to this picture book I will edit in less than an hour. The whole of someone, of an experience, of a life – it always comes down to something – at the crux of it all, there is an essence.

How do we find the essence? How do we measure the meaning of it in our lives?

I look at these pictures of my mom with her family and then I look away and consider all of the time my mom has devoted to her children that is not pictured in this book, or anywhere.

Millions of minutes – undesignated time.

She stands in the grocery store line; she waits in traffic. She cuts the crust off of peanut and butter sandwiches; she tosses the salad while the red beans and rice simmers on the stove. She brings me to the Teacher Supply Store in August to pick out the materials for her classroom – I get to choose the borders she will use for her monthly bulletin board displays. She sits in the bleachers while we play volleyball, basketball, football, run track. She insists we write thank you notes and brush our hair and practice our best table manners even when it’s a casual dinner in the kitchen.

She buys us shoes and toothpaste and Sunday dresses and fuzzy sweaters at Christmastime.

She feeds the dog, she feeds the cat, she feeds the guinea pigs that died from heatstroke that summer, she feeds the bunnies until we decide to give them away, she replenishes the bird feeder that feeds the mockingbird that flies into our kitchen at dusk and bangs against the window to get out. She checks our forehead for fever; she gives us charm bracelets and real gold hoop earrings when we are old enough to care for them; she changes her diet when the doctor tells her it could add years to her life. She reads – all the time, she is reading. She highlights the ideas that she believes will help us and leaves the books earmarked on our pillows.

She asks about our friends and listens to the answers. She never runs out of butter and when her youngest grandchild compliments her perfect preparation on his favorite meat – filet – she dismisses her cooking talent and tells him the secret is butter.

She can laugh when we reveal the ways we’ve lied to her over the years. She can laugh when she mispronounces a word. She can laugh through a TikTok dance challenge when she watches the recording and she is three beats off. She can laugh at her marriage that is as strong and steady and enduring as it is vexing and tiresome and frustrating as hell. She can laugh at the ridiculousness and blessing of being married to the same person for 55 years. She can laugh. She laughs and laughs – she laughs like she reads – all the time.

It's with these times in mind that I drag and drop the unnecessary photos.

I am committed to the essential. I find the 20 pages – notes included, some page layouts with multiple images – that equal the heart of my mom’s life experience so far.

I find the moments. We must find the moments.

I review the book one last time and then click to pay.

I know when my mom looks through this book, on her birthday and any day or night that follows, she will see what I see – the moments that define who she is and why she lives, and she will also see what is not on the pages of this book.

The essence of our lives is captured in specific moments – moments that can only occur because of the millions of minutes that go unnoticed, undocumented, not even worth mentioning.

This is such a good lesson for me – for us. You don’t need an 80th birthday to find your moments. You don’t have to wonder what will equal meaning to you on your 80th birthday – you actually have the answer now. Because it’s in the moments you’ve already lived and it’s in the moments you want to live.

The key is embracing the times in between - the unimportant minutes we spend engaged in activities that push us to the edge of the What-Is-It-All-For feeling.

These minutes matter. Forgettable as they are – they are not a waste.

When you know the moments you live for, undesignated time is not wasted time – it is time you use to make a life well-lived.

Ever since I’ve known my mom, she has known the moments that matter most to her. And she doesn’t waver.

She has moved through her life quietly committed to her values. Maybe that’s why she feels so at peace with this milestone birthday – maybe that’s why she says 80 is just a number.

The measure of meaning in one’s life is not about longevity – it’s not about reaching a certain age or income level or accolade or any external sign of success.

It’s about being present to the moments. It’s about welcoming these moments, living them completely, and letting them open your heart.

Mom’s birthday will be quiet this year. This special birthday book gift won’t even make a sound – and yet, here I am, sitting in front of a loud truth, ringing it in with my version of bells and whistles, which is words:

it takes time to live your life but it only takes a moment to experience the essential true essence of it all.

May you meet your moments with a whole and open heart. May you live your minutes knowing they serve the truth of every moment that makes it into the final version of your life’s story picture book.

Photo by Arun Prakash on Unsplash