As I stared at his bruised little face, my thoughts shifted back to a time when he was only a few months old and I was sitting at a table with his mother and father looking at his big eyes and beautiful, sweet smile—a pristine moment when everyone was happy and everything seemed perfect. Who could have possibly known that 2¹/2 years later life would change so dramatically for this family?

Even as a parent, I can hardly fathom what my friends are going through. To think that it might have been one of my children is a thought too difficult to dwell on.

As the days go by, the shock of the accident begins to fade and the reality of what happened sets in. The other day my girlfriend looked at me and said, "Only now am I starting to realize that the hard part is just beginning."

It will be a long road toward recovery, with a tough period of rehabilitation and a strong need for continual love and support from family and friends. It is something our family will offer endlessly. And although the healing road will be difficult, it could have been even worse. Fortunately—and perhaps even miraculously—he didn't break any bones. He did have a collapsed lung, a fractured skull and bruising to the brain, but he is cognizant of people and things around him, and he is speaking. He has limited motion of his left leg and arm, but his mother said, "I just want him to be able to walk and talk. If his left side is weak I can live with that."

And because we are close to the family—I to the mother and my daughter to one of the boy's sisters—the incident and her comments seemed to have hit especially close to home. Now I am looking at my own children and life a bit differently. Instead of tracing out a road map for the future, living in the moment has become much more important.

Conversations with my son and daughter and time spent with them on the weekends holds even greater importance than before. "Quality time," as cliché a phrase as it is, has taken on a whole new meaning lately. The little things—like sitting on my daughter's bed in the evening and discussing what's on her mind, or being at work and receiving an email from my 11-year-old son while he's at school—these are definitely occurrences that qualify for "living in the moment" status. And since the accident I seem to be placing more importance on now versus tomorrow as I realize I have only so much control over what the future may bring.

But it's hard to continually maintain that way of thinking. It's a mind-set more readily held by people who have had life-altering experiences, such as one of my friends who almost died a couple of years ago. His priorities have completely changed. What was important before has taken a backseat to other things, he told me one day over coffee. He no longer has any doubts about where his priorities or loyalties lie—family and living life to the fullest in a giving fashion.

But how do the rest of us reach that level when it is ingrained in us to place greater importance on tomorrow versus today? I am not advocating that we should toss the future aside. I am merely suggesting that our focus may be somewhat skewed and that we need to stop and smell the roses, remember to appreciate all the little things.

I admit that living continuously in the moment is downright hard, if not nearly impossible. But after spending time with my girlfriend and rubbing the hands and head of her toddler as he lay silently in his hospital crib, I am definitely going to work toward that goal, because the future is just too uncertain to not appreciate what we have right under our noses.

Moryt Milo is the editor of The Willow Glen Resident. She can be contacted at 400.200.1051 or mmilo@svcn.com.