Fast Forward

They say you can tell you're getting old when you glance at the calendar and realize a couple of months have gone by and you haven't even noticed. That and the new set of wrinkles which have apparently appeared overnight at the corners of your eyebags (your eyebags!), and aren't those liver spots dotting the back of your hands? There...right there, over where a new strand of milky-blue veins has sprouted on the crinkly paper-thin skin.

And some days, you're grateful for the accumulated wisdom of the ages, but other days you wish you had a horse on hand, or some other herbivorous quadruped with hard hooves to kick the ache out of your back (and maybe, hopefully, carve out a new one).

Another year of life. Another year that didn't bother to approach stealthily, to gently surprise you like a rainbow forming over the wide blue yonder, but a year that chose to jump violently in front of you wearing a colorfully feathered dragon mask and yelling "Ooogah-boogah!" whilst shaking a wooden coconut rattle in your face. Oh, is it that month already? So soon?

And the time warp that just occurred? (or perhaps an early visitation of Alzheimer's, take your pick) It seems to have carried both your children in it's wake: suddenly they seem twice the size they once were. And you shake your head and wonder how it's possible that Woog's pajamas, all of his pajamas, that once covered the length of his shins, now rest on the balls of his knees. Or how Eli's extra long, extra roomy t-shirts have bunched up above his burgeoning belly, making him look like Buddha in a shrunken vest.


And wait. How is it that Woog can now reach the kitchen sink? Wasn't it only a couple of months ago he was on his tippy-toes, hard put to deliver his empty dinner plate for washing? And Eli? He's walking!

Well...ok...he isn't really walking. At least not yet. But didn't you vaguely remember introducing him to Woog's old walker at the age of six months? He sat there for a while looking puzzled, fiddling with the musical buttons, and when he involuntarily kicked out with his feet, the sudden momentum that carried him a few feet backwards startled him so badly he loudly burst into tears. These days, you're hard pressed to keep up with his meanderings. "Uhm-buh!" He explodes, propelling his eight-month-old self in the general direction of the whirring electric fan, his curly topknot of curls bobbing like oft-jumped upon mattress springs, Yaya hot on his heels.



You feel joyous yet somehow despondent, and you sigh the bittersweet sigh of parents whose children are growing up too fast for you to keep up with, leaping through milestones at the speed of light. Don't grow up yet, you want to wail, hoping to hold on to their baby-hood and childhood selves as long as possible. Even as Woog reminds you, all adult-like, to wash behind your knees. Even as Eli reaches out from his high-chair and crams a couple of biscuits into his two-tooth maw, without even breaking into a sweat.

And you exchange a glance with your dearly beloved and equally aged husband, who is rubbing his lower back and wishing for some equine assistance of his own, both of you wanting years upon years upon years with which to enjoy life with the children, without the bothersome occurrence of time warps (or Alzheimer's, take your pick) to distract you from them.

But you finally settle unto yourselves with the realization that, indeed, another year has come upon you, and you are powerless to stop the inevitable progression of seasons. That the only thing left would be to devote unfailing attention to each passing day, to never miss a second of the beauty of your children unfolding.