Symphonies

Bang, bang, bang. “Funder!”

Mischa’s small, chubby hands grasp the sticks, sometimes hitting their mark on the drum skin, sometimes landing rhythmic blows on the shelf adjacent. A pause; sticks drop. The chubby hands pick up little cymbals. Crash, crash, crash. “Lightening!”

From below her perch on the toy shelf, a clatter of noise. She jumps down, brow furrowed; eyes darkening like the sky before rain.

“Cassidy,” she admonishes her sister, “we’re not doing funder; we’re doing lightening!”

Cassidy – smaller, chubbier – considers her sister for a moment, then turns and continues to whack the table with the spoon. Thunder.

Her older sister drops the cymbals at Cassidy’s feet. “Then I’m playing dinosaurs.”

I laugh out loud, I can’t help it, and watch as my eldest daughter abandons her sister and their game. She walks towards the pen of creatures on the other side of –

The image on my screen shrinks and I am left to look at a collage of stills. The video, which I had never seen before, has ended. My chest restricts as I fight a fleeting panic that my children are gone. I blink, refocus, search my screen for a way to jump back to that moment, but my husband had not filmed anything else from that particular evening.

2009. The girls were two and four. Where was I when my children were conducting stormy symphonies and corralling dinosaurs? How could I have missed such an uncomplicated moment with my small girls, when all I want now is to dive back there and squish their pudgy bodies against mine while the dinosaurs threaten escape? I know where I was.

I was upstairs, washing dishes and preparing lunches and straightening up a house that never seemed to stay tidy, not even for five minutes, could you please put these toys away, please.

I was grocery shopping, walking the aisles slowly, forgetting what I was supposed to buy even as I fingered the list in my pocket. Tired, but finally alone, lingering over a package label, the guilt that I would miss bath time creeping in.

I was anywhere but there. I was anywhere but in the claustrophobic playroom filled with noise and needs and laundry piled in the corner.

2009 and were we ever all in one room at the same time? How quickly would I hand my children off to their father, leave for a few precious minutes to do something, anything, that did not require being immediately responsible for two small humans? 2009, my children were little and the laundry was piling, and I was desperate to find, even for a few minutes, a way out.

And today I search my screen, scanning the files, looking for a video; a way back in. I shut my computer and rise, compelled to see my kids, unsure, for a moment, how many years I will find have passed.

They are downstairs, in another playroom, less claustrophobic; the laundry piled in another room entirely. My two girls are huddled around another table, leaning on arms, kicking feet, less pudgy.

“What are you guys doing?” I ask. I sit on the couch, lean back.

“We’re writing a song, Mom, listen.” Mischa stands upright, a chopstick in her hand. The conductor. Cassidy jumps to attention, and together they warble about a fawn in springtime. Cassidy stumbles through the lyrics; Mischa throws her a look of consternation, keeps singing.

I should film this, I think, but minutes pass. The song continues.

I make no move from my seat.