Going, going, gone

Life has officially hit warp speed. The fifteen year reunion of my PT class this past weekend was a clear reminder. Fifteen years, I can hardly believe it and I wonder where I've been. You laugh but it crosses my mind. Where was I when the younger me crossed the stage and snatched the diploma vowing never, ever to go to school again, ever?

Where was I when marriage swept me away, when we renovated one, then a second house and had three kids all right in a row? Am I really that same girl who worked here and there and then took a break for 9 years so I could manage the kid circus that life had become?

"Time will fly" we've heard a thousand times from a thousand people who have gone before us. We learn from them that we'll blink and our kids will be grown and married and before we know it we'll be grandparents and we can hardly believe they're right when we're in the middle of diapers and pregnant bellies and exhaustion and sleepless nights.

I don't know if they're right because I'm not that quite far along yet, but what I think at this point is that there must be a part of us that is timeless. We hold all the information as if it just happened yesterday but the circumstances that we find ourselves in and pictures that fill our keepsake boxes remind us otherwise.

Our children who once crawled are now swimming, doing multiplication, reading long books and winning art awards. They play songs on the piano and write diaries, develop strong friendships and suffer sometimes too. And each year that my son hits baseballs farther than the last I mark the passage of time, knowing that one day they will sail over the fence in the outfield. When they do we will cheer and shine, knowing that the goal was achieved and that while he runs the bases and touches home, that he is well on his way, away.