If/Just

As parents, we live by the words if and just. They are our mantra. Our lifelines. Second by second, hour by hour, day by day, you’re doing it without even realizing it. Just like breathing. Inhale on the if and exhale on the just. These two morsels are our daily bread, our sustenance. Tiny crumbs, but they carry us through the breastfeeding and the flying food and the temper tantrums and the backtalking. Maybe even through the sneaking out and borrowed cars and first dates.

We think, “If we can just get to the next stage.” Or the next day. Or the next hour. What then? Don’t we know already that getting to the next stage brings its own complications? “If he would just sleep through the night.” We use those words to invoke magic and cast a spell of tranquility. The words are optimism at its base truth.

If invokes hope. It sustains us with the thought that the effort we’re investing right now isn’t for naught.

Just invokes entitlement. “That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

And then, there’s the thought that one day… One day. That is a phrase pregnant with possibility. Oh, how many days will it take me to suddenly realize that one day has come and gone? Those days, strung together like a necklace made by my preschooler, have slowly piled up on one another and turned my infant into a Kindergartener. They also swiftly carried me into middle age, all the while chanting, “If… just.” Except now, they take on a different meaning: “If I could just get that one day back.” Her second birthday. Her first bike ride. Her last nursing. Her first prayer. The day I yelled at her and broke both our hearts. If only to have just one day back. Not to change it, but to feel it again. To just be in the moment, not wishing for if any longer. Inhale and exhale, breathing and soaking it in.

"Slow down. Be still. Breathe in. Refill. Be here. Be now." (The Robbie Seay Band)