As any mother of teenagers knows, quality time with this age group is often confined to fleeting glimpses at the front door. And that most days, family conversation revolves around the status of the gas tank or upcoming SAT registration. With all the modern teen–and the modern mom–has to juggle, the long stretches of togetherness that characterized the preschool years are a distant memory. That’s why it’s so nice when, once in a great while, a space opens up for a real conversation, or an unhurried meal, or a long, lazy afternoon stretching off until dark.

And we realize we’ve been given a gift.

Caught on the fly, this unexpected time–this present–is a clarion call to put down our to-do list and bring an A-game awareness to these young adults too quickly growing out of our lives. Finding something special to do is almost redundant, although anything involving laughter is always the quickest way to connect two sometimes distant points. A leisurely lunch of grilled cheese on rye, a nostalgic viewing of The Little Mermaid, an afternoon bike ride in the summer sun – these unexpected chunks of free time give us the fleeting feeling of being off the grid of ordinary life, suspended in memory like a snowflake on a cold sheet of glass. We are free to catch up, to gossip, to question, to discover. No one knows, we think. It’s our time. It’s our secret.

We only need one thing to receive the many gifts of free time with our older children, and that is our presence in the fullest sense of the word. It means being there, body and soul, when fortune hands us a snow day or the soccer game is called for rain. The list, the tasks, can wait. Our only directive is to seize the moment and show up, fully present, and create the kind of memory seldom remembered for its words, but always for its feeling.