Time Ramblings
Older people often observe how fast time seems to go. "Only yesterday the kids were in elementary school. Now they're grown and gone. Where does the time go?"
Meanwhile, younger people drum their fingers and complain. "It's going to be FOREVER before I finish my homework / graduate high school / find a boy/girlfriend / Christmas gets here."
That last one is a major difference between adults and kids. For kids, the time before the holidays drags. The day will NEVER arrive! Meanwhile, in mid-October, adults are saying "There are only four paychecks between now and Christmas." (I once pointed this out to my students, and you could see the "Whoa!" looks on their faces as they digested this previously unexamined fact.)
But really? I think time passes quickly mostly in retrospect, even for adults.
When you have a new baby or a toddler, and they're being difficult or you're exhausted with them, other parents love to say, "Oh, enjoy it now! She'll be a surly teenager before you know it!" This is not a handy perspective when you're trying to sooth an infant that's been screaming for two hours straight. Or when you're changing diapers in a public bathroom with no changing table AGAIN! Or when you're on a car trip and the kid's cup lid pops off sending juice everywhere. Time drags.
When you look back on it, though, time gets condensed. Those weeks and weeks you spent trying to get Clarissa to pass social studies are something you can look at in one quick piece instead of hours and hours of slogging and fighting. You remember the high points and the low points, but the drudgery in between vanishes into the memory hole. And you can't understand how you got here so fast. Time flies.
When I think of it this way, time doesn't fly. I'm 57 years old, and I've lived every day. I lived for several wonderful years in a big farmhouse in Wheeler when I was a child. I spent four and half years of horror in a half-finished house in Midland, and then two more years in arts-deprived Saginaw. I spent five years in college, a year working as a secretary in Ann Arbor, a year starving and freezing in northern Wisconsin, trying to survive on part-time teaching work. I started selling a few short stories. I spent three years back in college, both loving Mt. Pleasant and being stressed at living on a shoestring. I wrote my first novel. I started work at Wherever Schools and floated for three years in an overcrowded building. I sold my first novel and was contracted for a second, then a trilogy, then a fourth in the series. I spent four more years teaching in my own classroom in a nicely refurbished building, and then was transferred to another new building. I had a kid who turned out autistic, so I wrote two novels a year for two years in order to pay for his therapy. I adopted two boys from Ukraine who had special needs, and when all three boys were teenagers and I was a single dad, every day was either work or running the household, or wrangling boys--helping with homework, driving to appointments, playing games, inventing activities, reading books, going on road trips. At one point, the drug store told me it would be about 15 minutes to fill a prescription. I said I'd wait, and while I was sitting there, I realized that 15 minutes was the only time I'd had to myself in two months.
Time crawled.
Back then, there was no, "Wow--it's August already! Where did the summer go?" There was no, "Goodness--only a week to Thanksgiving, and I haven't started planning yet!" Every moment of every day was mapped out in excruciating slowness.
But when I do look back on it through the more usual older person's lens, it does seem to have gone quickly. Max may be up for a promotion at work and he's planning to house-hunt this summer. Aran and Sasha are well-established in their own apartments with their own lives, leaving Darwin and me as empty-nesters. But really? The "time flies" thing mostly applies to how long Darwin and I have been together. We're going on eleven years now, married for nine. That's nearly half the time I was married the first time.
Time is subjective. It goes as fast or as slow as you want it to, I think. You get to decide!
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Meanwhile, younger people drum their fingers and complain. "It's going to be FOREVER before I finish my homework / graduate high school / find a boy/girlfriend / Christmas gets here."
That last one is a major difference between adults and kids. For kids, the time before the holidays drags. The day will NEVER arrive! Meanwhile, in mid-October, adults are saying "There are only four paychecks between now and Christmas." (I once pointed this out to my students, and you could see the "Whoa!" looks on their faces as they digested this previously unexamined fact.)
But really? I think time passes quickly mostly in retrospect, even for adults.
When you have a new baby or a toddler, and they're being difficult or you're exhausted with them, other parents love to say, "Oh, enjoy it now! She'll be a surly teenager before you know it!" This is not a handy perspective when you're trying to sooth an infant that's been screaming for two hours straight. Or when you're changing diapers in a public bathroom with no changing table AGAIN! Or when you're on a car trip and the kid's cup lid pops off sending juice everywhere. Time drags.
When you look back on it, though, time gets condensed. Those weeks and weeks you spent trying to get Clarissa to pass social studies are something you can look at in one quick piece instead of hours and hours of slogging and fighting. You remember the high points and the low points, but the drudgery in between vanishes into the memory hole. And you can't understand how you got here so fast. Time flies.
When I think of it this way, time doesn't fly. I'm 57 years old, and I've lived every day. I lived for several wonderful years in a big farmhouse in Wheeler when I was a child. I spent four and half years of horror in a half-finished house in Midland, and then two more years in arts-deprived Saginaw. I spent five years in college, a year working as a secretary in Ann Arbor, a year starving and freezing in northern Wisconsin, trying to survive on part-time teaching work. I started selling a few short stories. I spent three years back in college, both loving Mt. Pleasant and being stressed at living on a shoestring. I wrote my first novel. I started work at Wherever Schools and floated for three years in an overcrowded building. I sold my first novel and was contracted for a second, then a trilogy, then a fourth in the series. I spent four more years teaching in my own classroom in a nicely refurbished building, and then was transferred to another new building. I had a kid who turned out autistic, so I wrote two novels a year for two years in order to pay for his therapy. I adopted two boys from Ukraine who had special needs, and when all three boys were teenagers and I was a single dad, every day was either work or running the household, or wrangling boys--helping with homework, driving to appointments, playing games, inventing activities, reading books, going on road trips. At one point, the drug store told me it would be about 15 minutes to fill a prescription. I said I'd wait, and while I was sitting there, I realized that 15 minutes was the only time I'd had to myself in two months.
Time crawled.
Back then, there was no, "Wow--it's August already! Where did the summer go?" There was no, "Goodness--only a week to Thanksgiving, and I haven't started planning yet!" Every moment of every day was mapped out in excruciating slowness.
But when I do look back on it through the more usual older person's lens, it does seem to have gone quickly. Max may be up for a promotion at work and he's planning to house-hunt this summer. Aran and Sasha are well-established in their own apartments with their own lives, leaving Darwin and me as empty-nesters. But really? The "time flies" thing mostly applies to how long Darwin and I have been together. We're going on eleven years now, married for nine. That's nearly half the time I was married the first time.
Time is subjective. It goes as fast or as slow as you want it to, I think. You get to decide!
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