The Thief is Back At It
An unprecedented time is upon our family. The other day we trucked it down to Cincinnati for a visit to the zoo to make a summer memory off the farm. I glanced at the kids in the rearview miorror to see May deep in a chapter book, lost in another world in the backseat. May's 7 in human years, but from my perspective, you've got to account for the quadratic meter of these years of her youth. You see, seven is not a standardized measure of time in our earthly life when more beats pass in some minutes than others. It's irrefutable that Father Time quickens the pace as life goes on and gets richer. But according to the Gregorian calendar, it was July 2024 when we rolled down Interstate 75 to the zoo, making May 7 and some change. And that sight of our bookworm in the backseat transported me to my old station as a young girl, tucked in the third row of the Suburban with my family of seven disappearing into this-or-that book of mine as we hit 75 North to Michigan in the summers.
May is aging into an era of memories which are familiar to me, because my earliest memories that I can recall fall around this very age: those early years navigating the school hallways, empowered by shoe-tying and the abilities to read and write. It's the inception of independence in a young girl's life. One of the greatest gifts of being human has been introduced to May, the world of written word...one where you communicate your thoughts, feelings, and ideas on paper, and best of all one in which you can be transported from wherever you are into a story by poring over a page, as the world around you falls away. She is finding other dimensions and I can observe her mind expanding in the rearview mirror.
Mine races. It races against the ticking clock in an attempt to slow the tempo to elongate our years with them. It's all in vain. Another school year is here, and you know what that means. I wake to pack bento box lunch and feed our beaglet pups and we hustle through the routine to get the kids to school by the bell. Month's of homework, school activities, pick up and drop off and the next thing we know I'm going to be writing their teachers' "thank you" notes in appreciation of another year of their dedication to our little ones. Father Time smiles knowingly at my incredulity as he waves his conductors baton with a flourish.
To think that there was a time when I was a school girl, wishing that summer break would come sooner so that I could rejoin the neighborhood swimteam is beyond me. I've learned my lesson too late as I wish for andante or at least moderato pace. At the very least, we live at a point in time when we walk around with cameras in our pockets-capturing bits of Father Time's moments-keeping them for ourselves. When the day comes that I don't wake up with these little humans in our house, I'll survive off of these freeze frames and videos which lock Jack's toddler cadence and speech in a little file on my phone so I can always return to them. And in the meantime, here they are now, sitting nearly on top of me, asking for a little bit of my time as I try to squeeze in some writing on our precious Sunday, a day that is just for us.
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