Saturday was one of those Autumn days with a brilliant periwinkle sky and a sun so warm that we had no choice but to peel off our layers and bask in its rays like worshipers of Ra. I sat on a large rock in a small Annex playground with my three children flapping all about me like birds flying towards the sun and relished in the light and the warmth and the feeling that my children are still young enough to want to swoosh down a slide and cuddle up beside me, and old enough to leave me alone to breathe in the sun. Even my teenage daughter, tired from a party the night before, was content to swing on a swing, to sit on a rock. There was a time (yesterday, and a century ago) that all three of them were attached to me like barnacles and the local playground was an extension of our home. Every mother thinks (read: hopes/dreads) that life might stay that way forever, that one day a plaque will go up next to the swings that reads, “she was a good Mum and she swung really high.” Lucky for all of us, it doesn’t. Lucky for all of us, the children find independence, as do we. They latch on from time to time to remind us of that life, and that forever is a flash.