Once, a very long time ago, a young (ish) mother lived in a new home. She worked part time, had two very small children, and was focused on finishing a degree in her spare time. She adored her children, but found playing with them tiresome. She did not like to play barbie dolls nor did she like to play trains. So, to pass the days, she became lost in moments that she planned. She planned trips to a pirate ship park, and watched the dark haired boy and the wispy haired girl dart like sprites in and out of the play ship. She tried to grasp them, but they were just beyond her reach. She walked countless steps at the zoo, holding their hands, tying their shoes, getting their drinks, purchasing seed sticks to feed the multi-colored and chattering parakeets. She would lose track of herself, and see the zoo sometimes through the eyes of her small children. The zoo became flashes of furr, and bright colors, of dirt and grime, and sometimes of sighs that came from a woman she no longer knew. She imagined a career outside of the days at the zoo, but never fully grasped that, either. She lived in a fog. She had friends she loved, she worshipped and adored God, her best friend and husband held tightly to her hand to keep her anchored. She became lost in Chick-fil-a children's meals, of squishy peanut butter sandwhich lunches, and in small packaged candies that kept her children content.
One day, in the midst of another day much like the day before, she realized her children no longer held her hand when they walked, that they no longer skipped on the asphalt paths at the zoo. Her children no longer stared in wonder at the orangatans at the zoo, they no longer sang sweet songs or nuzzled her neck like the baby giraffes they watched. She had lost herself in a moment that turned into 7 years. On the other side of the moment, time had slipped inexplicibly through her hands. A season had passed while she was lost in one moment.
A new season hoisted itself upon her, and she tried to become lost in a moment again, but wisdom would not allow it. She was forced to comprehend in fleeting glimpses of her life that life itself was as fleeting as the previous season. With the fog clearing, she drew both children near to her, smelled the top of their sweaty heads, felt their soft skin, looked deeply into their eyes, and drank their childhood as if it were an elixir that might ward off further laugh lines, wrinkles and age spots. But it would not.
She began to plan a life for herself once they were grown. She tried to comprehend eighty years through 35 year old eyes, but even with the recent widom she had gained, eighty years seemed like just a number. She prayed over them, prayed over herself, not for things wisdom begged for, like a strong faith, or confidence, or wisdom. She prayed for more time. Time to grasp and understand the moments that had passed, and the moments that were yet to be. It was a selfish, shallow prayer, yet it was a prayer she could not let go of. Once she witnessed the passage of 7 years in a moment, she questioned the very essence of time itself. She no longer trusted her watch, nor calendars, only sunrises and sunsets. And she prayed for many of those, in the vain hope that she might become swept up in the crash of another wave of time, and lose sight of everything except the small children in front of her, rushing quicker to meet adolscence. She wished to watch them stumble and get up, she wished to have her husband's sure hand as moments gave way to years, and years to decades. She wished for more time: isn't that the way it is once one tastes life, and the fluid movement of it all?
