“Grandma, I’m a fourth grader now.”
It seems like only yesterday that Alea made that statement to me.
Surprise! She’s now through school, has her bachelors and masters and is a working woman living down near Lansing.
Her sister Alison has also joined the ranks of “adulting,” and is working closer to home, but so busy we seldom see her anymore. She is at home with Mom and Dad, but getting ready to “leave the nest” this summer. Then Lisa and Terry will be empty nesters again.
Thinking about it caught me by surprise. Oh, I know they are getting older, but wasn’t it just the other day when they started kindergarten and spent every Friday at Grandmas?
School is just getting out again and it seems like summer is already flying by.
The Summer Solstice – the longest day of the year – is only a little over two weeks away. From that time on, all the days will be getting shorter again. Pleasant thought isn’t it?
Time just seems to go by faster and faster, especially if you are a “mature” adult, like me. Oh heck, I might as well admit it…I’m old!
Remember summer when you were little? Didn’t summer vacation seem to last forever? It seemed like you had unlimited days and weeks to just have fun. I remember I couldn’t think of enough things to do to fill the days.
Now I am looking at the calendar for the rest of June and July and every single weekend has something penciled in. For semi-retirees, we sure seem to lead busy lives.
Author Steven King wrote a short story about time that I have never forgotten. He said time goes by in three stages throughout your life.
Up to the age of about 14, he writes, it is “Slow Time.” You know what he means. School days and summer vacation seem to drag on and on. Then it’s summer and the days are golden. They seem to last forever and you think you have all the time in the world.
“Real Time” takes over after 14 and lasts up to about the age of 40.
After that, at some point you just wake up one morning and realize that time is sliding by faster and faster until sometimes you aren’t even sure what time of year it is. He called this Fast Time the “old bald cheater.”
I know exactly what he was talking about. Seems like it was just the other day I was writing about how long February seems to last and here it is nearly the middle of June.
That old saying “time marches on” should be “time crawls, walks, suddenly flies and then it’s all gone!”
The worst of it isn’t just losing a season suddenly. There have been times when I’ve completely lost track of the year! When I write down the date, I have to stop and think. I have no idea why, but for just a moment (and it happens pretty often these days) I have to stop and think about what year it is, especially in January and February when I’m just getting used to a new calendar.
Maybe because your mind is relatively empty (something buddy Al used to accuse me of) of experiences when you are young and as it fills up, you start overloading until you begin to lose a few things here and there.
You are so busy living that you don’t even notice the time slipping away.
I know that at least once every day I find myself halfway into another room and unable to remember why I am going there…
I probably shouldn’t be admitting this in of all places, a newspaper, but chances are there are a few of you out there that find yourselves in the same predicament occasionally. If not, I guess I really am in trouble!
We have been so busy at the paper this spring, time really has been flying. This week we are having a bit of a lull (of course it really hasn’t started yet…) We are in between things with Summerfest and the Fourth of July coming up pretty fast –
It is only a couple of weeks away now!