This may seem like an obvious statement coming from a mom, but it’s not something I say out loud that often, except to Mr. Geeky. I tell my kids I love them all the time too. But not anyone else. It’s like it’s our little secret, the love we have. A friend once told me I was the most unsentimental mom she’d ever met. And that’s true. When my mother in law gave me a sappy poem about how quickly childhood passes, I didn’t bat an eye. I generally don’t fall in for that sappy sentimental stuff. No, it’s the every day stuff that gets me.

It’s the way Geeky Boy plays video games with me and suggests strategies that “play to my strengths.” (Yes, he really said that.) It’s the way Geeky Girl volunteers to scrub the walls and complains about not having enough boy Barbies to play Star Wars. It’s when I watch Geeky Boy go out the door for a museum trip dangling his camera from his wrist. It’s when I’m standing in the grocery store debating whether I really should buy another bag of chocolate chips and thinking about how Geeky Girl explained she wanted to make the round ones this time.

I don’t get all choked up at the times when I’m supposed to–when they go off to school for the first time or score their first goal in soccer. Something catches me off guard–a word, a smirk, a cock of the head–and suddenly I realize how fleeting this is and I want to remember it forever. Some moms would, at such moments, rush over and hug their offspring and gush over them. I don’t. That’s just not who I am. Instead, I smile. I choke back the tears and just continue on, comforted by the knowledge that other such moments will come if I’m willing to watch for them.