The Current of Life Moves Swiftly

I know I’m not the only one who looks in the mirror and still sees a young woman who still listens to young/hip music, still laughs at bawdy humor, and who still dances in the car when she drives.

Some days I never see the wrinkles that shadow the corners of my eyes, the age spots on my hands that I prefer to see as new freckles, or the lack of strength in my hands when I can’t open jar lids anymore without the help of someone stronger. All of these changes I push to the back of my mind as if they didn’t exist; that is until reality intercedes and I am forced to acknowledge where I am in this thing we call our life-span and I silently accept that I’m not twenty-five anymore.

Sometimes it’s simply the events in our lives that force us to answer to our ages. Sometimes it’s the conversations when you’re re-telling old stories and the crowd surrounding you appears stunned that your story didn’t include covered wagons, and Cowboys and Indians, because the tales that you’re reciting from memory sound to them as if you’re an ancient relic.

And sometimes, it’s something as simple as your youngest child is six months away from being twenty-one years old, and your oldest child is eight months away from being thirty years old and the last conversation that you had with your oldest child he was saying he hoped he didn’t have a birthday crisis – and all you can think while he’s talking is – I hope you don’t either, because both of us cannot have a crisis at the same time.

From last May until even just recently, so many engagements have been announced, wedding dates set – and I mean by children! And if they’re not getting married, they already are married and they’re all having babies - babies that are playing tee-ball, and taking ballet lessons and starting kindergarten!

And the parents of these children wonder out loud, where has the time gone? How did their babies turn five years old this summer? Well let me tell you kiddo’s something, I wonder the same thing from time to time myself.

How did my two children become grown people, with grown-up jobs, and living grown-up lives? What was I so busy doing that I didn’t notice they weren’t wearing little boy sandals anymore, or that they now wear cologne that smells like those good-looking men that pass you in the mall, or that I’m no longer telling them they need to bathe with soap, they know when and how to shower all by themselves.

Slow down, work hard, but work less and play more. Be present for all those silly faces and conversations, make story-time a nightly regime, finger-paint with tiny hands, bake cookies, and on Saturday, play in the water-sprinkler instead of cleaning house. 

Because the next thing you know you’re looking in your own mirror, applying wrinkle- cream and wishing you could re-wind your own life, and used your own time a little wiser and made more memories.