Thursday, March 4, 2010

Time Flies

I was writing the date today, and all of a sudden realized, Hey! It's March! Christmas wasn't that long ago, and I was just raking leaves, it seems.

I saw the kids waiting for the school bus this morning. When I was their age, March was no-man's land: Christmas long past, spring vacation far away, and the end of school well past the distant horizon. Now? Today I was arranging to pick up my grand-nieces for a visit after Easter, less than a month away. Also planning our Independence Day trip back to the hometown, and the accompanying birthday party of one of the grand-nieces. And the next weekend, too, a cook-out at home followed by the Sailfest / Groton-New London fireworks. It's just around the corner.

It's a function of age, I think: as a kid you have so little past, any time interval is a significant fraction of your life. I suppose I could get the same proportions by flipping it and evaluating future events as measured against the time I have left, but who wants to do that? Plus, it would likely make time seem to go even faster.

Maybe it would be best to see time as I imagine a cat sees it: light, dark; hot lie-in-the-shade-outside season and cold sleep-in-the-sun-patch-inside season. Not to mention dinnertime-- I have no problem with that timescale.