Honest to dog tears welled up in my eyes.

I remembered when Sophie was his age, a book she had that listed various bath toys. Towel, Ducky, Soap, Faucet. I was overwhelmed with nostalgia for just a few years ago. In Kid Time, though, those years are uncannily light-speed. I mentally flashed-forward to Sophie, a 20-something parent of her own, and me trying to tell her about that book and the word “towel” and how she said it. I wondered why my own parents don’t relate these little memories of growing up. Then I was struck by fear that these moments dissappear; that memory is incorrect, that this memory will soon be gone. That’s why my parents don’t tell me. They don’t remember.

I was suddenly sad, but my son was already down the hallway and picking out his own pajamas, and there was no more time for nostalgia.

I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.

- President Abraham Lincoln