Time in a Bottle

I remember crying buckets as a child when I first heard Jim Croce’s song Time in a Bottle. Thinking about the passage of time impacted me even when I was very young.

I’m thinking a lot about Time today.

You know how Time meanders and turns over on itself:

- how you still have nightmares about being in high school and not being able to find your locker even though you wake up to find yourself (shockingly!) in your forties

- how you can’t figure out how your toddler suddenly became a teenager - yet you can still see him clear as can be as an infant – can almost reach out and touch his baby face - long to snuggle him like you used to (seemlingly yesterday) but can't lift him anymore

- how your mind wanders and you consider visiting older relatives, then you suddenly realize that generation is gone, but it seems they can’t be because those are people who were always part of life - how you're not the kid anymore but are moving closer and closer to the top of that waterfall of generations

(Well, maybe some of you can’t imagine these things YET, but someday you will. Trust me!! Time, like the "ever-rolling stream" it is WILL bring you there!)

Well, since I’m immersed in thinking about the stream of Time today, my blog is going to be LONG and is going to BABBLE like a stream. Don't say I didn't warn you! (Feel free to read the long paragraph really fast, because it is a stream - a stream of consciousness. Reading it fast might even add to the effect of rafting on rapids.)

Here is why I’m thinking about Time:

My oldest son began high school today (how did that happen?!). It seems like yesterday he was a baby. Fourteen years have passed, and in only 4 more (D.V.) he will be leaving home for college. I don’t like that ratio, especially when I think of how quickly the first fourteen years went. (Speaking of time, I just googled “D.V.,” and on the first page nothing refered to “Deo Volente,” so I guess it is an anachronism; I had to type in the full “Deo Volente” to find reference to it.) I begin another semester of teaching tomorrow – new faces replacing the ones from last semester – same seats, same room, same teacher, same topic, but new faces brought in by the stream of time. My sister and brother-in-law were married a year ago this weekend, were together on a honeymoon, but the passage of time to today has them separated by a world of distance, but given more time they’ll be reunited. Time is a weird thing. Yesterday was my birthday. As a mathematician, I like the date 8/27 or 2-cubed/3-cubed. During my party, Mom shared with me that my due date was September 12. I’m glad I arrived when I did, because I like the numbers. (See I told you this was going to be babbling! Don’t say I didn’t warn you! I sense deja vu! Did I say that already?) Speaking of meandering streams, I thought of a friendship that began 13 years ago last week (the significance of any number not being lost on me), and it reminded me that we can never see ahead in time, only backwards. The current only flows one way. My mother-in-law turns 70 tomorrow (WOW!), and my youngest niece reaches double digits for the first time on the SAME day. Next year my husband and I will celebrate our twentieth anniversary. Wait a minute! That sounds like a number my parents should be celebrating, but, um, I guess since I just turned 41 that doesn’t work mathematically. I remember when my parents celebrated their twentieth. How did I get as old as my parents? I’m beginning a graduate program next week. It should take me 3 years to complete. People assure me it will be over in no time. That’s great! Wait. I don’t want the next 3 years to fly by because that means in only 1 more I’ll be sending my first son away from home and off to college. And so, my meandering thoughts have circled me back where I started, with my son beginning high school today.

A topic like this is just crying out for a poem. I had a long poem in mind, but since the blog was so long, I feel a short poem is in order. I’ll save the longer one for tomorrow.

Carpe Diem

Carpe diem, ‘Sieze the Day’
And I do not want to hear you say
Memento Mori
That’s another Story

(by David Darbyshire 6/11/54)