A lifetime ago, I was single and working in a daycare center. As I was walking down the hall, towards the end of the day, a little girl from the 4 year old classroom stopped me with a slightly forlorn look. “What time is it?” I told her it was 4:30. “Oh”. She responded. Then after a brief pause. “How long till my mom gets here?” I asked her what time her mom came to get her. “5:00” she stated. “Great” I told her. “Then you only have half an hour!”. “How long is that?” she sighed.
“Well”, I said. “You know how there are long cartoons and short cartoons?” She nodded. “30 minutes is a short cartoon.” Her whole face lit up. “I can wait that long” she proclaimed, and skipped into her classroom, pony tail bouncing.
Time is relative. Always has been. Always will be. I could have told her that 30 minutes is how long you have to sit in a dentist’s chair, but that would have made her wait feel like eternity. But it would have been accurate too. They way we feel time is so dependant of how we feel about the manner in which we pass that time. So how long is time, really?
Our wedding was approximately 6 hours long, and it went like a flash. I loved our wedding. I feel like I must have blinked for too long because before it knew it, it was over. So much fun and so worth the hours of planning it required. 6 hours can also be the length of a school day when you have 4 tests or an eternal day of meetings that seemingly accomplish nothing, bar giving you a splitting headache. That day, as we all know, does not go by in a flash. It drags and pulls, wreaking havoc on its path. . By evening, you feel like you lived 2 days, not one.
Today has felt somewhat eternal, and (as I write this during their nap time) I have only had the kids for 6 hours, the same length of time as our wedding. My son has rash/bumps that we thought might be chicken pox so I had to take 2 kids to the doctor, only to find out that he is teething, has a sore throat common to the start of the year and a myriad of bug bites I can’t explain the origin of. Hmmm… Guess I just got paranoid because one of his classmates had it. Add to that the fact that my daughter is teething too and has been whining incessantly for days now. We have not been sleeping well, thanks to our little lady bug and I am exhausted from the start up of a new semester and house guests.
I took my little angels out for pizza to celebrate the benign diagnosis, and that went well. Getting them back in the car with 2 hands, two kids, a diaper bag and a leftover pizza box was less than smooth and efficient. I could actually see my car but couldn’t get there for almost 5 minutes. Perhaps distance is relative too.
Suffice it to say that my nerves are a little jumpy right now. Time is dragging.
But I know, with absolute certainty, that when I look back on the time period that encompasses this day, I won’t remember this. (Unless I read back on my blogs, of course). I will remember how tempestuous and sweet my daughter was. I will remember that earnest pout my son puts on when he has a “really big” problem. I will remember the glee on their faces when their pizza arrived for lunch and the vigor used to consume said pizza without fuss, mess or complaint. They even took turns eating off each other’s plates and giggling. So they can share when they want to. Interesting.
I will remember how lovely kids are when they were 2, how innocent and funny. I will also remember the struggles, but not with the clarity of the current moment. Time, that wonderful relative entity we all ponder, will erase the bad and maintain the good.
Maybe that’s on purpose? Maybe it’s simply our way of unconsciously protecting ourselves from our less than perfect memories? Whatever the reason, I’ll take it.
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