Today I just want to pause in the simple joy of sitting on the floor and playing with children like I’m one of them, but using my adult strength as part of the play.

Bench pressing them (they are only tiny at five and three-and-a-half), holding them up and spinning around on the ground so they look like they’re flying, and just listening to their cute piping voices chunter away.

Giving their poor mum and dad (my brother and his girlfriend) a little break from watching them.

Bathing in their sweet calls of “Uncle James! Uncle James!”, trying to have an adult conversation with my brother and his girlfriend while not ignoring these precious little ones…

…because every time I see them they are just that little bit less little…

…and I am minded of the ABBA song “Slipping Through My Fingers“, and thinking what it must have been like for my parents – my mum in particular – trying to keep up with their own little ones slowly but quickly turning into troubled adults.

Wishing to preserve that innocence and purity, yet knowing that a parent’s success isn’t measured in keeping a child a child forever, but in launching a well-adjusted adult into the world.

And then feeling heartbroken at every little obstacle, upset, or calamity that mars the dream of a happy adulthood that is the one consolation of parents as they grieve the loss of their tiny ones through the theft of time.

So I sit on the floor and forget that I’m an adult and bathe in their giggles and joy.