My daughter turns seven tomorrow. I can hardly believe it. I’d like to ask where the time has gone, but I know where it has gone. It has slipped through my fingers, minutes turning into weeks turning into years. While I was on a client call earlier today, my computer went into sleep mode and random images from my photo archives began floating silently across the screen. I watched with a lump in my throat as pictures of my daughter danced before my eyes like a presentation on “This is Your Life”: the day we gamboled in the field – chasing butterflies, doing cartwheels, and painting watercolor pictures of circus elephants; a charming moment when, as an infant, she fell asleep in my bed with our huge dog curled up beside her; dozens of photos of her bright, broad toddler smile beaming at me – full of joy, pride, and an unquenchable curiosity about everything around her.

The years haven’t just flown by, they have disappeared like the ball in a magician’s sleight of hand trick. One moment you see it, the next – gone.  But the memories remain. As the photographic evidence of the past 2,556 days faded in and out on my screen, the feelings that accompanied each captured moment came flooding back to me. Emotions and sensory memories wrapped themselves around each moment like the lustrous layers of nacre on a pearl. The last seven years becomes a beautiful strand of softly shining treasures that warm my heart even as real pearls warm to the touch.

Seven years old tomorrow and so many firsts and lasts already come and gone. But we’re not nearly done making memories. Sunday night as we were getting ready for bath time, my little girl called out in her clear voice, “Mommy, come dance with me!” Though it was getting late and I knew this invitation to be at least partly a ploy to delay bedtime, I took her hands in mine and we spun in dizzying circles, our socks sliding across the kitchen floor. We giggled. She reached her arms up and I obediently hoisted her onto my hip. As I swung her around, she leaned in and planted a spontaneous kiss on my cheek. I looked down and saw not the tall first grader who is nearly big enough to go without a car seat, but the precocious toddler with pudgy little fingers and only the vaguest notion of the world outside her mother’s arms.

I set my tiny dancer down and stepped back to give her the floor. She twirled and kicked and swept her feet across the floor in intricate steps that she made up as she went along. She gave the routine a little hip action, and a fair amount of sassy hand jive meant to mime the lyrics. She struck a pose and admired her reflection in the darkened glass of the sliding door. I smiled, my heart brimming over with deeply felt love, pride, delight, and hope for her future joy.  She turned and grinned at me, laughing at herself and the mock seriousness of her performance – ever the little girl, ever my little girl.

I smiled back and joined her once again on the dance floor, knowing that this was another of those grain-of-sand moments that will become a beautiful, shining pearl to be treasured for the rest of my days.