September 28, 2001

The way of things

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A month ago I was five years old, on Christmas Eve morning. I had to get through a whole day and tire myself out as much as I could, so I could go to bed early and sleep soundly, and bring Christmas Morning to me as quick as I could. But even in my brief life's experience, I knew the post-Christmas let-down would come all too soon, and I'd wish I was back at Christmas Eve, and the anticipation of it all. Last week I was eleven years old, antsy for the arrival of a promised trip to Disney World with my grandmother and cousin. Gram told us about the trip in July, and we weren't going until November. It was sheer torture. But I remember thinking "All too soon, I'll be on the other side of the trip, and I'll remember what it was like thinking it was so long to wait..." Yesterday I was sixteen years old, and just going into my last year of high school. The year between me and graduation (and, as I thought, the world of being grown up) felt like an insurmountable task. But I remember thinking as I sat in the first class of the first day, "I'll remember this moment as I'm standing on the podium accepting my diploma, and it'll seem like it went by so fast." Today I woke up, almost startled to find it was Friday again, when it felt like I'd just been groaning the minute before that I had a whole week to get through. And I can see how quickly time is slipping through my fingers. How fast the days and weeks and months are flashing by. I know that someday I'll wish I was twenty-seven again. I wish I could stay here, at this point in my life, forever. I have become the family chronicler, trying to capture every moment before it gets away. Tomorrow I'll be thirty years old. I'll have spent my Sabbatical in Maine, and wonder where the last seven years spent at AcronymCo went. I'll have paid off my bills and started accelerating my plans for retirement. I'll know it's not the pinnacle of ancientness that I expected it would be when I was a teenager. I'll contemplate that thirty came a lot faster than I thought it would. Next week I'll be retired. I'll lament that the best leisure time of my life has to be spent when I'm less able to enjoy it, physically, than I would have at thirty. I'll look through Michael and Marie's childhood pictures, and shake my head at how much their children look like they did when they were little. Calvin and I will spoil our grandkids shamelessly as we buy them presents from the distant places we travel to. Pervasive will be the feeling that there is more of life behind us than there is ahead of us. Next year I'll reach the end, and I will look back upon my life with a sense of peace, love, and the feeling that I just blinked, and all of a sudden time has run out. I'll remember writing this journal entry and how I felt, and think "Twenty-seven, you didn't have a clue." In my head I'll still feel like I'm sixteen years old, but my heart will be filled with a lifetime of joy, with no regrets. Holding hands, Calvin and I will gaze upon each other, and smile. Bittersweet, and all too quickly over. It's just the way of things, but I wish I could find a way to make it all slow down.