How Fast It All Moves

I was sitting at my computer this past week, the edits to my manuscript challenging me to stay focused, when I paused and looked out the window. It was one of those crisp early spring days here in Central New York, the kind that teases you with the promise of warmer days ahead.

Across the street, our neighbor was playing catch with her daughter. Lacrosse sticks in hand, they casually tossed the ball back and forth while Roy, their young Labrador Retriever, happily sprinted between them trying to turn the whole thing into a game of keep away. It was hard to say who was having more fun, dog or human. I would call it a tie.

It was just a small, ordinary moment.

I should have returned to my editing.

But something about the scene held my attention for a moment longer.

And then, almost without trying, I was somewhere else.

It was my two boys, high school age, tossing a lacrosse ball across our front yard nearly twenty years ago. Between them, Casey, our first dog, charged from one brother to the other, one eye fixed on the ball sailing over his head. If dogs could suit up for lacrosse, Casey would have been a defensive middie. He was an absolute ground ball machine.

That memory made me smile.

If I am being honest, the smile also came packaged with a little sadness.

In my mind, I could hear Casey barking again and my boys laughing. Back then, I was probably sitting in my home office, focused on work, only briefly noticing what was unfolding outside the window. To me, it was just another spring afternoon. Ordinary. Temporary. Forgettable.

But it wasn’t.

We spend so much of our lives chasing things we believe will matter forever. Careers. Promotions. Bigger houses. More accumulation disguised as progress.

But in the end, it’s moments like that game of catch in the yard that stay with us. The moments we didn’t plan for, didn’t pay for, and barely noticed at the time.

Memories are the only thing we get to keep that don’t cost a thing.

I didn’t know back then that a simple game of catch would matter so much someday.

Casey is gone now, perhaps waiting for me somewhere on the other side of that Rainbow Bridge. My boys are grown men with lives of their own. At the time, they were too young to understand the importance of the moment, and I was too consumed with career and advancement to fully appreciate it myself.

No one gives you a user manual telling you which moments to hold close.

I’m back now. Across the street, my neighbor and her daughter are still playing catch. Roy shows no sign of giving up the chase. It was time to get back to the manuscript.

But this time, I was carrying the memory with me. And it felt less like something I had lost and more like something I was lucky enough to have lived.

A bit of precious cargo I didn’t know I had been collecting all along.

Dan Troup writes The Sunny Side of 57, where he shares reflections on life, family, career, and retirement. His upcoming book, A New Game Without a Scoreboard, explores what happens when the structure of work fades and questions of identity, purpose, and belonging take its place. When he’s not playing pickleball or hiking with Sue and Rigby, he’s usually thinking about the next post, even if it only shows up once a month.