The young couple at McDonald's...

My middle-school aged daughter had cheer-leading practice tonight until 7. She is growing so fast. Six years ago she was in first grade. Five years before that she was a babe in my arms. I was overwhelmed just looking at her. I still am. Six years from now will be graduation. At least one of us is getting older far too quick.

To pass the time until her practice was over I went to a nearby McDonald's. As I sat alone reading a newspaper and finishing a diet coke a young dad came in with his two small children, and sat at a table near mine. The children, a boy and girl, appeared to be two and three years old and excited about being out with dad. Leaving the children at the table dad went to the counter to place their order, as their mother came in unseen. She bent low, and slowly came up behind the children's seat. As she popped her head up from behind them the children started laughing and shouting "Mommy, Mommy!" She hugged them as they shouted to their dad at the counter that "Mommy's here!" Dad sat down with their food and there, in a fast food restaurant, was a perfect table.

I wanted to walk over and tell them to cherish this moment; to breathe it in and don't exhale. I wanted those young parents to know that after they left that night NOTHING in the future was going to equal knowing that that night, in that place, they were the most important people in the world to their children. I wanted to tell them how wonderful those little hugs of joy are, and how fragile time is. I wanted my 17 year old step son to be two again and happy to see me. I wanted to be lifting my little girl up on Daddy's shoulders for a walk through the flea market her mother had to take us to. I wanted to hear her singing the alphabet in the back seat of the car on her second birthday and telling me the reason she could sing it so well was because she was "older now - like a woman". I wanted again to laugh at that because then we knew her "being a woman" was closer to twenty years instead of the now less than ten.

I wanted to tell the young couple at McDonald's all those things, but I didn't tell them anything at all. I wish I had. I wish someone had told me. And if they did I wish I had listened closer.