Fully Alive: Three Moments I’ll Never Forget

What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?
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What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?

I could probably come up with a lot of answers. Great football games. Trips. Moments when something happened that got the adrenaline flowing. But when I really think about it, three babies come to mind.

The first was June 10, 1998. After a full night of labor, my now ex-wife, Vicki, gave birth to my daughter, Lizzi, at 2:56 that afternoon. A few minutes later, after the nurses had cleaned her up, one of them put her in my arms. And yes, I was fully alive.

There are moments when you realize immediately that your life has changed forever. That was one of them. I was holding this tiny person I had just met, and somehow I already knew there was nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for her.

Fast forward to September 24, 2023. That was the day my grandson, Sully, was born. A little less than a month later, I was at Lizzi’s house and got to hold him for the first time. There it was again — that same feeling of being completely alive.

Then came May 20, 2026, when my granddaughter, Aurelia, was born. About a month later, I was back at Lizzi’s house, holding another tiny baby in my arms. Once again, I was fully alive, but this time there was something else mixed in with it. It felt a little like time travel.

Lizzi is my daughter, but she’s also become one of my very best friends. Sully is my first grandchild, and he’ll have my heart forever. And Aurelia is my precious granddaughter, and she looks so much like Lizzi did when she was little. And she is so tiny. Holding her took me back to 1998. For just a moment, it was almost as if I were holding Lizzi again.
That may be the strangest and most wonderful thing about love. You can know someone for only a few minutes and already love them more than you thought possible. You don’t have to learn how to love them. You just do.

And in those moments — holding Lizzi, holding Sully and holding Aurelia — I wasn’t thinking about yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. I was simply there, completely present, completely grateful and completely alive.

About Douglas Blaine

Capnpen is a writer who was a newspaper and magazine journalist in a previous life. A college journalism major, he now works as an English teacher, but gets his writing fix by blogging about a variety of topics, including politics, religion, movies and television. When he's not working or blogging, Capnpen spends time with his family, plays a little golf (badly) and loves to learn about virtually anything.

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