Time is NOT on Our Side

I don't know what is it about time and the way it can pass so quickly sometimes and go so slowly other times.  It takes forever and  I mean FOREVER to grow up and get through school.  Waiting to get a driver's license at 16 takes oh so long.  But finally, FINALLY it happens!  It seems to somehow take longer still to get to Halloween and Christmas each year when one is a child.  Time drags and lags and takes its own sweet time.  The exception is the summer when one is a child and school age.  Time speeds up then.  I promise you I only had two weeks off in the summers when I was in school but listening to my mom tell it, it was a summer that was a hundred years long.  Being a mother now, I can clearly see that she was right.  Sometimes summer just won't die.  


Then something big happens.  An event in which most of life's milestones will be based upon: Before high school graduation and After high school graduation.  Right after high school graduation someone (Who, a House Elf?) presses the fast forward button.  The speeding up of time is subtle at first and it is not easily noticed when it is taking place.  Then time gathers momentum and gets faster still.  Many don't even notice it until time has passed them by and they are standing there still holding their diploma wondering where all their friends went.  But time does go faster.  I promise you it does.  Maybe we switch to "dog years" after a certain age.


By the time most people get married and have kids time begins to go faster still.  Days, weeks and years can go by without one feeling like a time frame of only a few days or months at the very most have gone by.  Or maybe that is the case in a good, happy and healthy marriage when things are going the way we want them too.


Depending on the circumstances time can seemingly speed up and slow down at will. Not our will though, obviously.  When I could not get pregnant with Cinderella time seemed to stand still.  In a lot of ways it did.  I felt like I had no hope and I would never get to that place in time and hold a positive pregnancy test in my shaking, scared and excited hands.  Everything was measured in two or four week increments and for the most part my life seemed to go at a snail's pace.  After a while it finally did happen (and happened again a few years later).   Everything worked out though.


After being married for a few years Cinderella came along.  When Cinderella was a newborn the days seemed to drag by when she was small and fussy.  I was with her a lot all alone and had no other friends close by with babies.  Talk about isolating.   But the years blew right on by.  Before Cinderella turned three we added Baby Sleeping Beauty and time went into warp speed.  Yes, some days still dragged and lagged when the Toddler Princess and the Baby Princess were fussy, crabby or sick but the weeks, months and years on the calendar have flown out the window and gone down in the proverbial history books.  It scares me to think of how time seemingly goes faster the older people get, the more children people have and the older the children get.


How is it that sometimes the days, as I am living them, be it a good day or a challenging day, seem to go in slow motion or at a normal pace but somehow YEARS of my life are gone?!  I have a lot to show for said years - a husband, two children, a home, nieces and nephews galore, tons of writing and journaling, photos, memories, gray hairs, wrinkles, etc but the time has slipped right out from under me.  Is THIS how people end up being old?!  My guess is yes.


Has anyone else noticed this same unexplainable time paradox?  Cinderella started Kindergarten a few weeks ago.  Well, it seems like it was a few weeks ago but really she is in first grade now and she started Kindergarten over a year ago.


It blows my mind.