How are my kids growing up so fast?

I suppose this means I’m getting old(er). Obviously. I surrender and fight.

Next weekend is Dante’s graduation party. When we set the date it seemed so far off, and here is comes at the speed of light. Sophia is already 20 years old, living in an apartment a few miles away. Dante will be heading off to college in the fall (and this summer). Though I’m not yet 40, life marks us in stages rather than ages sometimes, and I am the mother of two young adult children (and three other teenagers).

Yesterday I took the youngest three to the park, and they played on the baseball diamond while I walked around the path. A path I’ve walked many times; alone, with Frank, with the kids, all of us as a family. One night in the thick of winter, it was icy, crisp and black, I walked the path under the stars. I was sad, angry and needed to just be out in an open space, to move and not think.

Yesterday I allowed time to slow on me, walking the dog, listening, thinking, smelling, feeling. Being present as much as possible. I people-watched as two mothers (possibly my age, but with infants), donned in track suits with their babies in strollers, warmed up on the basketball court in bounding leaps towards the strollers, the retreated in a light jog back across the court. Bounding leaps, light jogs. Back and forth. They looked incredibly ridiculous. I applauded their efforts of sacrificing appearances for fitness. My mind then wandered to ponder to what a pioneer from long ago would think of such a sight. After all, who needed to a run treadmills and make crazy in in public to be fit back then? Who would have thought in the future people would have to set aside time to work a body hard?

My mind carried on to the next scene, young soccer players darting after a ball. Quite a contrast to last weekend’s games where big boys with muscles and five o’clock shadows prowled the field. They were young once, too. I remember it. Vividly. Franny and Sal especially.

My what time does. It robs you and gifts you simultaneously. A generous thief.