Tiny hand prints.

We have a set of French doors that lead into our office. When we moved into our house two years ago, these doors were beautiful. The panes of glass were sparkling clean and the trim paint was a crisp white.

When we moved into our house two years ago, the kids were early preschoolers. Peter was 4 and Sarah was 2 and a half.

Peter still needed help wiping his bottom, still rode a bike with training wheels and still wanted me to sing him a song every night before bed.

Sarah still used a pacifier, still carried Elephant Blankie and Little Blankie around with her and still wanted me to sing her a song every night before bed.

Now the paint on those French doors is dinged up from being slammed too hard and scuffed from Hot Wheels and dump trucks being crashed into them.  And the pristine glass panes are now smudged with remnants of tiny hand prints and streaked with Glass Plus.

It used to be part of my weekly cleaning ritual. I would spray and rub and shine the panes trying to remove those tiny hand prints.

And I would silently lament my dirty house. The toys. The smudges. The dirt. Those tiny hand prints.

But two years have passed now. Passed too quickly, I have recently realized. And now I let those hand prints linger on the glass panes. I’m not as anxious to clean them off now. Because the hand prints aren’t so tiny anymore.

And all too soon, I know they will vanish.

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This post inspired by a quote from Dorothy Evslin and the realization that I now smile wistfully at the growing hand prints on the panes.

It will be gone before you
know it. The fingerprints on the
wall appear higher and higher.
Then suddenly they disappear.

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