I am that mom who had my kids out the door early. Summer camps and travel experiences led straight to college and beyond. Even if they circled back home they were clear across the country in no time at all. My mom never held me back from life either. Regardless of my questionable decision making, she let the cards fall as they would. When I needed to circle back, she made sure I did not shy away from life for long. All that is to say that I don’t often have them, my children, together in one frame, but last week they stood together for a moment, on a grassy hill, with the latest addition to the clan kicking a soccer ball, ocean pounding along on the horizon and the cobalt blue taking up the vast sky overhead, and I smiled.

I am also the mom who wanted other labels. Artist, writer, teacher, dancer, sometimes cook, okay that is not true, but certainly one can’t avoid doing all the housewifey things while raising children. They get hungry, and dirty, and bored, and curious, and tired, and adventurous, and emotional, and needy, and angry, and creative, in trouble and sick, in love too, and you are around for years of that, anticipating next steps or taking a step back. Mother is perhaps the one label that will stick with me for all my days even though I am no longer needed to be one.

I am grateful that I was a mother long before social media glamorized the role, and in the same breath makes one feel inadequate to its standards. In our home the kids were dressed in hand-me-downs and often eating whatever could be put together on the fly. Life was occasionally messy and edges got jagged but by day’s end appetites were satisfied and sleep came easy. As we now savor moments with our curious grandson I am reminded to slow down. Allow him space to construct his own meaning, his unique version, his own life. This is perhaps what grand-parenting allows for that parenting can’t do regardless of what momfluencers say. Parenting is a job that comes with no instructions, with rules that change everyday with every kid, and always done on the run. Grand-parenting is far more laughter and far less lessons, and often with fewer surprises for some part of you has been down that road before. Regardless, these grand-parenting moments are moments to steal with zeal.

There is much written about the racing, the bustle of life, that drive that makes us all want far more than we have the time to do or complete or manufacture or claim. Do we need side-hustles or full-calendars or endless-competitions or daring-dreams or can we just hit pause for an afternoon? Funny to even write those words since I rarely consider relaxing an activity, but if you are going to allow for a moment with those you love, a pause can produce the exact reaction you need to feel the moment.

From the very start of my life August has provided family time. We were packed up into the station wagon and caravanned to Long Island for peaches and corn and a romp in the salty Sound but mostly we wandered between cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. Todays life includes far less of all of them but last week we carved out a few hours, built days into a week, took a respite from all the shoulds and coulds, and as luck would have it, we all stood still within a moment.