Where Did the Time Go? A Response...

This morning I registered my daughter for kindergarten. But I'm not sad. I'm not really nostalgic. I'm not melancholy at all. In fact, when my partner and I arrived, all that I could feel was bliss. Pure, constant happiness for her, for us, for the efforts the public school she'll attend is making to become richer and more diverse and more child-centered and more inclusive of the families of its children. All I could do was to be viscerally there. Then.

Where did the time go? my friends and family ask. Surely she cannot be in kindergarten! Where did the time go? they ask when they see how my baby boy is walking and talking and making jokes and upping his adorability factor in every moment.

Where did it go? Where did the 4.75 years my daughter has been out of the womb go? Where did my son's 19 months go? Time went right into them, and it's sitting in their pores like the nectar of the gods, in their cells like life's essence, and it seeps back out in every new word, every bit of sorrow, every blink of confusion, every single note of "Let it Goooooooooo!" that my daughter sings. I can see Time in my son's reaching for the balloon string hovering from the living room ceiling, in the aura of mystery around the potty chair we just put in the bathroom last month, in his endless efforts to get a rise out of his sister, in his drooly wet kisses and his sleep-drunk baby body.

And as those beautiful whispers of Time unfold in the eyes and limbs and hearts of my children, so it does in us. And between us and them those unfoldings, like long, graceful arms, reach for one another and take hands. And they make a soft, fluid, loving embrace that is our family. And we watch, and feel, and with every effort try to stay present in the presence of Time.

And that is what I said to my dear partner as we crossed the concrete, icy-patched parking lot of the public school where my daughter will spend her days starting in September. "Sweetie! Let us be present now. Let us be here in this moment. Can you believe it?" And we can believe it. We can. And that walk across the parking lot will always be a part of my Now.