The Days Are Long

The years are short.

It doesn’t feel this way until your forties. At least for me. My twenties and thirties were filled with wanting to move forward– in my career, relationships, as a writer, as a being in the world.

Events appeared uniquely distinct, sharply outlined as if each moment was etched in a vibrant full color billboard that could be retrieved from memory at any time.

And then in a kind of blur of time, the catalogue of billboard memories morphed into more of a large-scale impressionist painting. Softer, but disorientingly hard to take in, without stepping back.

The Days.

There are tasks.

Slice strawberries, pick up birth control medication, snuggle one son with Strep, get the other to do math homework, work, get 2 lbs more coffee, a basketball for a friend’s birthday, work, drop one son at lax practice, pick up the other from band.

There are missions.

Find the perfect vintage coffee, the fullest four-foot boxwoods, the most delicious recipe for blueberry muffins, the best haircut for boys, the new and improved plan for NOT eating so many chocolate covered almonds.

And, there are goals.

Discover the least yelly method for moving through jam-packed mornings, untangle the knarly knot of schedules, fine-tune the art of psychological chauffeuring.

The details of a day can be hard to step back from.

The Weeks

The weeks get marked by kids practice schedules, client meetings, doctors appointments, lesson nights, coffee dates, business dinners, sports games, movie night, Saturday morning French toast breakfast and pizza Sundays.

It resembles the vertically zigzagging blood pressure read-outs. Some days are frantic with extremes. Others reasonably constant.

The Months

Dotted with holidays, trips, band shows, school plays, vacations and birthdays, months offer up a slightly longer look.

But then, like vistas in the distance, you drive toward those little dots on the horizon. You look away, for what seems like a minute, and suddenly the vista is right there on your left– you are passing it and then in a blink, it is a dot in the rearview mirror.

The Seasons

They are stretchy.

Like baseball, they are not bound by time. They are not predictable. They are determined by nature and weather and forces that cannot be tied down to a clock or calendar.

It is relief to be governed by something not linear, not measurable.

Flowers grow. Peepers sing. Robins build nests. Fireworks dance. Leaves turn. Geese migrate. Trees go bare. Snow falls. It all repeats.

It is the domain of rituals– family trips, Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas mornings.

The Years

Three hundred and sixty-five days. Fifty-two weeks. Twelve months. Four seasons. One year. The incremental passage of time exhausts itself on the shore of our experience.

More milestones.

Births and deaths, marriages and divorce, new homes, jobs, friends and wrinkles. But the most poignant, when you have children, is their birthdays.

Eventually, a decade goes by.

Whaaaat?

On Saturday, Leo turned ten.

It is just another day in May.

But something happened. We crossed an invisible bridge. He has been with us at home for more years than he will be. We realized, as a dear friend said this week, that they are not ours; we are merely shepherds.

It is obvious and yet it sinks in differently at different times. Kind of like the way a truly great song resonates differently over time.

The twists and turns in each verse, the ironies and beauty of the chorus and phrasing, the grace and loss– it deepens.

And then, at some point, we hear the bridge. Really hear it. Not just the notes. Not just the lyrics. But the bittersweet sting of knowing what inspired the songwriter.

The hit to the heart.

All at one time, we know, and the lyrics, the notes– even the familiar chorus we thought we knew, becomes haunted and blessed with realization.

It is a kind of no-going-back-now knowing,

After it, everything changes. And yet stays the same.