The Missing Grandkids

Mt son was in a bad marriage some 20 years ago, which ended in divorce. That is never a good situation. There were four kids involved. I don;t want to go into all of that here, but I adopted one, one went into foster care and the two littlest ones were adopted. It was a closed adoption, so no contact was allowed with their biological family, except a minimum amount of contact with their brother, when they requested it. Since I was his adoptive parent, I got to go along and see them, but only me and my wife.
After a while contact stopped, some eight or nine years ago. I missed them, but was in no position to push.
Saturday, V. texted me saying that someone he thought was maybe his brother had friend requested him on Facebook. He wanted to know what the last name was of the adoptive parents was, so I told him, and indeed it was his brother.
Once the two of them had connected, I friended both  of them.
Good Lord, how they have changed. They are grown, or close to.
But that's not what I wanted to write about.
I wanted to write about a particular moment of time, about fifteen years ago.
I was an early winter morning, and I was up early, alone. Joshua and Jayce were spending the weekend. They were pretty much inseparable when they were small.
I was sitting in the big chair out in the music room, reading the Sunday newspaper, when they sleepily dragged their little selves out and climbed into the chair with me, one snuggled on either side of me.
The early morning winter sun slanted in the window and warmed us.
It was a moment of such complete contentment, that I took a moment to set it in my mind. With all the uncertainty in the world I knew it was extremely unlikely that the moment and the feeling would last or likely ever return.
I have kept that memory stored away and cherished ever since.
Hold on to those precious moments and never, never take them for granted.