it's a funny thing

 

{  s  o  u  r  c  e  }

Isn't it breath-taking, how time moves? Things have been so busy these last few months, June especially, and it's got me thinking how fast things go. Nineteen feels like yesterday, and at the same time so far away it might as well be another life. 

When I was a kid, I had a whole different understanding of age. Anything over mid-twenties seemed so adult - so you're twenty-seven? So you must have it all together, got things figured out. It seems laughable now.  I'm about to move back to the States and I have no idea where I'm going to live, what I'm going to do. And that doesn't bother me.

Things are shifting in my head. Thirties seem young. Forties, fifties, sixties - young.
We're all just figuring things out as we go.

My kid is turning six this year. He comes up to my belly button. Not saying much, actually; I'm pretty short. But sometimes I look over at him and I think 'were you ever so small, that I could hold you with one arm?' He's a world traveler; bilingual, a little artist. Sometimes it's a relief that he likes to suck his thumb when he's falling asleep, and carry around that ratty blue elephant. It makes me think I've still got a handle on things. 

'When I grow up, I want to be Peter Pan,' he says. 

Two of my siblings are marrying this year. One is building his own house, another getting his learner's permit. Three are graduating with college degrees, transferring, on the verge of relocation. The youngest of us is a teenager.

We were just kids, right? Running barefoot through the Appalachians, taking cross-country road trips with our parents. 

My childhood friend just had her first baby this week, a beautiful little girl. We met when I was twelve. At a roller skating rink in the middle of nowhere.

It's funny, isn't it?

Life just gets away with itself.



You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.  - Atwood, Cat's Eye