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One of my favourite things to do is to watch Jake play guitar. He's been taking lessons for a few years now and he has no problem keeping up with the ever-increasing demands that his teacher, Tim, puts on him. Every Wednesday night the three of us sink into Tim's couch and watch Jake play. Tim's couch is one of those big, soft puffy ones. Our bums sink to the floor and our ankles end up against our ears. It's a trap, quite honestly, and quite honestly, a good one. Give me a fruity drink and a pair of diapers, and I'd gladly spend the next 30 years on that couch.

Tim assigned Jake the song, "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses. Tim himself is a genius on the electric and so we have the honor of watching him play. When he played the intro to the song on Wednesday night, a sacred hush fell over the room. I'm convinced that the one last spring from the couch collapsed in reverence. Katie and Freddy were staring at Tim's fingers going crazy on the guitar, and I was staring at Jake, who was staring at Tim's face.

His face contorts around in various grimaces and open-mouthed concentration. Tim doesn't merely play the guitar, he makes love to it, and the result of this union is truly breathtaking. He stopped the solo, looked at us and grinned. We exhaled a whispered, "wow" in unison, gave our heads a little shake, and then plowed forward with the lesson.

But that look, the one that Jake had on his face when he was watching Tim play, seemed familiar to me and I spent a couple of nights thinking back to where I have seen it before. Jake's eyes were wide as saucers. Not a fearful-wide, but a hungry-wide. His face was soft and his mouth was open a bit. He had absolutely no socially protective walls up in that I could tell that in that moment it was just him and the music. Nothing else existed. No girls to impress, no parents to obey, no itch to scratch. The vent between Jake and that solo was directly linked, and it ended only when the music stopped.

I remember when each of my babies were born, the nurse would put them onto my chest and we'd melt into each other. It was in those first moments that I would see that same expression of awe and reverence. Eyes hungry and receptive, face soft and open. Nothing exists in that moment except my baby and I. When Jake was about four months old, he and I were playing on the floor in the family room and my sister Tracey walked in. She stopped and stared at the both of us and said to me, "you're in love with him, I can see it! The way you're looking at him!"

Andrew and I were snuggling on the couch with my head on his lap and as we were drifting off, I opened my eyes and had that moment where everything around us faded away and all I could see was art. My gaze consumed each part of his face and I let the beauty of it all fill me up as I sunk into the soft couch of familiarity and safety.

Sometimes moments like that are expected, like after the birth of a baby, and sometimes they show up in the most random moments but in both circumstances, they are gifts just waiting to be opened.