Friday my niece started her first day of kindergarten, and her mother, my sister, like most mothers when their baby starts school, survived the day with joy, longing for the baby she missed and a fair amount of tears. I too shared a first as my oldest daughter began the first day of her senior year of high school.
Like most parents not long after Hannah’s birth I began to do the math of all the milestones that would mark her youth. Being born in 1987 she would start school in 1993. She would start middle school in 1998, and would be a freshman in high school in 2001 and she would be a proud member of the graduating class of 2006.
Time has always had some weird properties. We all know that time flies when you are having fun, but can be painfully slow when waiting for something good like Christmas. Time does not act the same for all of God’s creatures and we are all aware of the conversion formula to translate regular years into dog years. It takes an Einstein to figure out time.
Since I was just 24 when Hannah was born, the 18 years that stood between her and the end of her youth appeared to me to span a couple of life times. At least! But I had yet to learn about the acceleration affect that parenting puts on time. All the time I had to hold her, to teach her to ride a bike and to read, to watch Bugs Bunny together, to laugh, and to do all the things that fathers and daughters do together was gone in an instant. Eighteen years elapsed faster than a child’s summer vacation.
Today my youngest child, Clara Grace, turned eight. This time I don’t think I’ll waste any time doing the math.
