I opened the Voice Memos app on my phone without thinking, and just stopped. It was a recording from the daycare years — little bits of conversation from the car, my kid humming a nursery rhyme. I tapped one file, and I think I played it back ten times, easy.
It had more pull on me than any video ever did. Granted, that's probably only true for me. To anyone else it's just a kid's voice. But to my ears it sounded so mysterious, somehow. I'd deliberately dig it up and listen every time I hit a red light while driving. For a while, at least.
And then it hit me: someday, even the sound of my kid whining right now, or telling a little white lie right now, that voice is going to sound just as magical, a few years from now. The only difference is one thing. Back then, I recorded it. Right now, I'm not.
Try to remember the last time you recorded your kid's voice. You probably can't even remember.
Listening to it, I feel a mix of regret, guilt, gratitude. All tangled together. But in the end, one feeling remains above the rest. A blessing. It's just a blessing.
So these days, I sometimes just pull out my phone and hit record. No particular reason. Just because.