It happened again today. I was going about my business and suddenly I was in a face to face struggle with the nemesis of all mankind--TIME.

I've done something these past two weeks that I've been meaning to do for awhile--I've been watching every episode of The Sopranos back to back. I'm at about the fifth episode of the fifth season (the latest one) and at the end of the fourth, there is a scene of Carmella walking into her lonely house but stopping at the porch and turning around to a flashback scene of little Anthony Jr. on a big wheel saying, "Hey Mom, look at me!" and he wheels as fast as he can down the driveway and out of the scene. Carmella flashes back to the present moment and the episode ends.

This hit me right in the heart because, as a parent, you begin to develop this kind of sixth sense of memory with your kids when, you'll find yourself in a mundane moment when your child is smiling or saying something new or laughing at a cartoon on television or handing you a transformer robot, saying, "Make a cah, da-ee. Make a cah!"--and you realize that this moment is what life is all about and that it will never get any better than this.

These moments with your kids are the invisible gold that you can't put in a safety deposit box; that parabolic treasure to be stored in the heaven of the soul. It's what men have been killing for and dying for since Moses wore short pants.

But the Catch-22 is that when you're in the moment and that feeling of sacredness descends and you become aware of it, you are already removed and the moment dies. You can't stretch them out and you can't reproduce them. And one day that sweet little boy holding his Transformer up to you is going to be asking for the car keys and then closing the door behind him as he leaves your house for the last time that he'll refer to it as his own.

Time is a bitch and it wins every time.

But I have to believe that those sacred moments that we store up in our hearts are like twisting confetti of joy that, when we die, explode out of us and fill the ether with pure light and goodness, enough to illuminate the world for a few seconds and allow everyone to see the righteous path and fill them with the courage to take it.

I have to believe because the alternative of lost moments is just to painful to accept.

TT: Family, Death, Hope