When to take a picture or a video

It was Ginny's birthday today and she listened to a recording of Dad singing happy birthday from a voicemail he left last year. It's ironic. Of all of the songs Dad sang a million times, happy birthday is nowhere on my top 40 list and yet it's what we have. If I had a recording of singing a duet of Down by the Old Mill Stream with him or him singing Kaw-Liga or Farmer Boy, or The Wild Colonial Boy I'd be ever so much happier. But I don't. It  never occurred to me to record it. Not once in my life. Not even as he drew his last breaths and I gasped my way through thanking him for everything I could think of to thank him for. I sing for him day after day now and I miss him so bad when I sing his lullaby to Hazel. I'm glad he sang to me. I bursted into tears when Hazel asked me to sing Kaw-Liga yesterday in the car. I asked him to sing it in the car over and over and over as a child. When I was very small he made up a parody about me and my blackbird because I was sad to go to school. I wish I remembered it. I wonder why I always just thought I'd go stand by one more bonfire and have one more family singing fest with him. I wonder why as people told me to soak up and savor every second with my children, I didn't heed the voices reminding me to savor everyone else just as much. When they told me to take pictures of the childhood because someday I will forget... I think I took those warnings a little too literally. I have a million pictures of people eating icecream and standing primly for the first day of school and playing dress up... And don't get me started on zoo animals. Lately I've talked to mommies facing the first day of school who shed a tear as they let go a little bit more as they send one off to kindergarten or high school and I think - it's bittersweet. It's worth a snapshot. It's a moment worth pressings to your memory. I suppose it's the end of something but it's nothing like good-bye. If I had a movie of me sitting by a tractor singing song after song with my daddy when I was a kid, I think it would be the greatest gift. And I think I need to open my eyes and really see what my treasures are that I will want to revisit. Things that will transport my kids back to the happiest moments in their childhood someday. Things we do. Things we say. Things we sing. Things we share. I remember a day a song was playing and Jody swept me into his arms and danced with me and sang it in my ear as we danced and I think... what if I could have recorded it so I could see it all over again someday? So listen to me as I say, take that picture or that video when someone is laughing uncontrollably or leaping into a grandparents or if you are super lucky a great grandparents arms. You'll like that progression of pics of your kids on the first day of school and all of their childhood antics but there will be nothing like those moments you were full of joy. I laugh in earnest at the people who say to put down the camera and just live in the moment. For someday we will conclude, that is exactly the moment we wish we had a window into. This is something I know.
Here is a moment when Jody was chasing Hazel and she dashed into GG's arms and said "you can't get me Daddy!" And GG murmured in her ear "don't worry I won't let him get you. You're safe."