frozen in time

i found this photo of sophie today, in a box of pictures that have been in the broom closet since we moved here, going on four years ago. i don't think it was as interesting of a picture back then as i find it today, maybe because it was too recent, and i had no distance from that time. it was a frozen moment of the way things were all the time. but to have unearthed it a few years later, it has tremendous ripples all around it. just seeing it transported me back to that time, and made me miss it, and to realize that time is indeed moving at such a pace, though in the present i never feel it. somehow it reminded me that i will be an old woman, and that it will probably take me by surprise. i'll probably not even realize it until i see myself in a photograph, maybe even a blurry one.
but i love this picture of sophie. i have never been the kind of mother who wanted her children to stay babies so she could have them to baby. i've always looked forward to them growing up and becoming independent individuals. but this picture, and many of the others that were also in this box, made me nostalgic for my children's childhoods, though life was much more difficult back then when there was no time, or money, or privacy, or selfishness allowed. i am much more selfish now because i have the luxury of being so. sometimes when i think back to those days, all i can remember are the things i think i failed at. but then i see a picture like this one and i think, well, it must have been alright most of the time.