Because now is now

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are the days of auld lang syne, Pa?"

"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep now."

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, "This is now."

She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

An excerpt from Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

::

The snow fell like glitter last night, fine as dust. She nestled next to me in her hand-me-down Hello Kitty pajamas, toes buried beneath quilted butterflies, as I read these last lines of the first "Laura book".

She's just one month shy of five, and I want to go on about how she was two the last time I checked, but this is now. And I'm so glad, like Laura, that it cannot be forgotten; because now is now.

We're here in it, she and I. And what we need is here. All we need is now.