There would come a point in this life when I’ll not be able to walk across the hallway into my daughters’ room in the early morning darkness and place the weight of my lips on their sweaty foreheads before leaving for work. Eventually the path of our journeys would seize to align and theirs would diverge into a flowerier pasture away from mine.
This thought occurred to me this morning as my alarm beeped and brought me to the realization that my Mum and Dad must have boarded their flights in Amsterdam for the last leg of their journey back home to India.
The second last month of the year too is here, soon it would be 2012. The ticker of the time flashing away despite the moments in it, emphasizing the realization of fleeting moments. Sometimes I think that the measure of time and its passage is futile. It doesn’t matter, whether you observe it, let it pass and stay in it, it will go nonetheless. Why hang on to something that is passing, going away?
I find myself fascinated by the sand timers and have a glass one sitting on my mantle but I don’t stare at it after the first few times, after the novelty of speed and flow wears out. There must be a reason for the constant fixation on measuring time. May be it’s to find a rhythm, to ebb and surge, to create the music of life at a measured pace and then play with it to bring excitement and surge. That excitement must be referred as ‘change’ and if today is any sign, I am far from being a master of set pace to handle change without meltdowns.
At 18, I started living away from my parents and except for one year after my undergrad when I moved back with them, home has always been a process in the making where I then lived and also a place in my memories where I and my parents used to live. There is no familiar window ledge or hide out in the attic or secret closet in my parents’ home that I can call my own and there is no physical place I can go back to reside in the warmth of nostalgia except for the presence of my parents.
There is a place in the ‘now’ where I have created a physical home and filled it with love and affection and a blend of our individual personalities and I cherish it. And this is a place that my daughters’ will look back at and seek comfort from. And I am saying all this because I didn’t know it then that those passing moments are one of a kind but I have realized it over the course of this journey to not let a moment pass without acknowledgement…. Better said that done, the year is coming to an end and despite thoroughly enjoying each moment I find it went by too fast.
As I am forced to evaluate my time keeping, it leaves me with an unfamiliar taste. Should I keep track of Calendar years or just treat time to find my rhythm while I live, unabashedly and unapologetically and while acknowledging it but unafraid of its presence or lack of it.
1 comments:
I could just hug you!
You voice so many things I think about sometimes and I always end up feeling a little better after reading your posts.
Lately I've felt myself in a panic because the last few years since Erin was born, time seems to just be slipping away from me.
But what I want is for my children to have warm, happy memories of home and our family when they grow up.
I think that is what is most important because time does go on no matter how much we would like it to stand still sometimes!
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