They say hindsight is 2020. Taking full advantage of this reflective clarity, we will discuss how my early mathematics teaching practice was characterized by a focus on the past-tense, and detail how attending to enactivist notions of cognition has allowed me to reify the practice of teaching mathematics into an activity that emerges in the present tense. By contrasting tenants typical of a past tense orientation to ones of a present tense orientation, we will aim to bring forth a conception of what it means to teach mathematics as a full participant in student sensemaking in the (ever-emerging) present tense.