"The days are long, but the years are short." Now, at the very end of the year, Gretchen Rubin's famous quote glows in uppercase in my mind. It's hard for me to grasp that all of those forever-ish afternoons of the past year have tumbled together to make another year that feels as if it has whizzed by.
There were milestones. I somehow turned fifty years-old. My small boy impossibly entered the oh-so-grown-up second grade. Mr. Rosenberg and I marked ten years since our first date. We lost people and found others. We packed up our things and moved five blocks to the new house. We celebrated and mourned and made music. We watched caterpillar turn chrysalis turn butterfly. We sang and blew out the candles.
I am left with pictures of us on front steps and on beaches. There are memories of baseball games and basketball games, soccer goals and foot races and trophies on the shelf to show for them. There are parts of busted water balloons left in the lawn from the hot summer. There are haircuts and scars and marks on the wall to show how tall.
Rocky Voltolato sings,
Please slow it down
Theres a secret magic past world
That you only notice when youre looking back at it
And all I wanna do is turn around...
I have turned around. Now I will look forward to more long nights and long afternoons and hold out my open hands for this new year to land on.
See you there.