2012 06 02 All In Time

Holy Crap! It's June!

I can't believe it. Where did the spring go? The last thing I new, I was pulling the strings tight on my hoodie to keep the wintery chill off my head as I took the dogs outside. That was just, umm, the day before yesterday, right? No? well, it couldn't have been more than the week before, right? No?

What the heck is going on? Where is the time going? Who ripped all the pages off the calendar? Somebody make it stop!

Ok then, I feel better. I may not look better, but I do feel better.

Remember summers as a kid? Remember how they seemed to last forever? That is, until the second week of August, then the same calendar page ripper had his way with it all. Even back then, when you least expect it, the time just seemed to fly.

The longest span of time known to man, or known to a kid, was the time from Thanksgiving, until Christmas. Those were some of the longest weeks, days, hours  of my life. Every day, it seemed that Christmas was one day farther away, not closer. How did that happen? How could time play such a mean trick on us kids? I mean, it dragged, and crawled, and rolled like molasses uphill on a cold wintery day, and then, whappo, it was gone in a flash! Before I knew it, it was the middle of January, and Christmas was long gone.

When my son, Matthew, was born, I remember thinking to myself, "Man oh man, 18 years is a long time. I am going to be raising him with my wife forever." Well, I am here to tell you, forever was gone in the blink of an eye, as well as the twelve years past that! I don't know where the time went. I don't know how he grew up so fast. I don't know how I grew so old so fast either. I mean I don't even look like I am old, umm, what? What's that? I do? Me? Huh? Really? Man, time sure has it's way with certain things.

It really isn't fare, why I look so old, and my wife still looks like she is 23. What's up with that? This is some practical joke, right? someone put her in stuck mode, and flipped my "Wicked Far Ahead" button, right?

No matter how old I feel, or look, it's just a state of mind, right?

Please note, if you say, "no", I'm coming after you.

Life as a kid. It didn't seem to move much. It just was. Time really wasn't too relevant back then, it just was. I was just always looking forward to the next ball game, or the next trip to the ocean, or the next snow storm, or thunder and lightning storm, or Summer Rec, or the next kid thing, or I could go on and on, and so could being a kid.

I go back again to the beach behind the Seaview Restaurant in Lubec. Walking down on the shore near high tide. Sitting down on a rock and shoving a stick down into the sand. Waiting for high tide, and as it crept closer up the sands, I watched as it finally touched the stick, completely surrounding it, then after some of that time thing, it slowly started backing away once again. Before I knew it, the tide had slid out thirty or forty yards, and I was left, sitting there, looking at what had just happened, wondering where the time had gone.

The tides, like the ticking of the clock, they just never stop. Everything, everywhere I look, just seems to keep moving. Nothing ever stands still.

Funny how quickly the first day of school ran up around the corner and turned into the last day of school. New years day marched through to New Year's Eve in another blink of an eye. Life just keeps happening, one day, one second, one year, one month, one minute at a time. It all adds up, in time, to time. Pretty amazing to think that the clock has never stopped ticking, not even once, all these years. Can you hear it on the wall? Tick, tick, tick. It's always moving. It never stops. It never cares what's going on, it just keeps being, and ticking, and turning, and spinning and moving ahead.

It does seem to move quickly sometimes, and slowly, other times. Just last month, when I went to visit my folks, I noticed that the first few days crawled by very slowly, but then, before I knew it, I was on the plane, heading home with a head full of memories.

Where does the time go? How does it seem to hide on us, and then, out of the blue, "Here I Am!". How the heck does it do that? Is someone in control of it all? An official universal time keeper? Is it God, or maybe one of his friends?

I don't know what it is, or how it happens. I don't know who to blame, or thank, or ask. I don't know where it went, or who put it where, or what's making it go by. I don't know why I start a lot of my sentences with the same words. I don't know who ate the rest of the chocolate chips either.

Ok, I do.

I can't help it, the bag of chocolate chips always seems to get lighter, with time.

Can you hear that? Listen. Shhhhh. Hear it?

Tick, tick, tick.

It just never stops.