There is no way to slow it down, the change, the growth, the blossoming, the becoming…it is, like Joni Mitchell says, A Circle Game…I’m not ready for it to stop, but sometimes it turns faster than I can handle, and truth be told, sometimes it moves so slowly I can’t breathe…I suppose the balance is in the understanding, that in life, in living,  there is constant motion.

Today is warm, compared to the last few frigid weeks and the mounds of icy snow from our weekend blizzard are getting smaller and smaller by the hour, so I take a deep breath of the fresh January air and realize that the days are growing longer, minute by minute a sliver more sunshine each evening, bit by bit, little by little…round and round…

I watched a silly short video of my grandchildren the other day which I took four or five years ago, as they sang Christmas songs at my breakfast bar, and even those snippets of time make me pause and think, how fast it is going, and how ill prepared I am for when it all stops…I’m thinking a lot about time lately, recognizing that there is not enough time for all that I want to do, or perhaps maybe there is just enough time if I get on the ball, or maybe, there is an abundance and I’m just being silly or anxious or needlessly worrying in my mid-life.  I knew a person for a short while several years ago who was positively obsessed with the NOW.  Seldom if ever did he recognize any wrongs he had done in his past, and seldom if ever worried about his future, but always just felt the only thing that mattered was right this second, every second.  It’s something I have struggled with for all of my adult life, the dreaming and wishing and planing and hoping, and I suspect it’s something that I will continue to struggle with until I give up this fight and just be in the moment.

I visited with my grandmother three times in the last month.  She just turned 98. The second of the three visits included my father, my sister, my daughter, and my nephew, and it that small room, packed tightly with people who share deoxyribonucleic acid, and history, I felt time stop for a moment…we are all in this circle game whether we are mindful of our participation or not.  My daughter recently celebrated her 30th trip around the sun and my dad is about to celebrate his 74th, the man I say “I love you” to, will be turning 50 in just eight weeks, and shortly thereafter my parents will embrace their 50th anniversary of marriage…it’s all just time isn’t it?  Time on this planet, breathing in and breathing out…

I know several women who are suffering right this hour, who are sad, and worried, or scared and uncertain…some of them are distressed about themselves and some of them are fearful over their daughters, and all of them are thinking about their dreams, their wishes, and their time on this earth and what to do with it… do they have enough of it, and if not, how best to spend what time there is…it’s heavy in my heart, the hurting of these women who are my friends.  I am a woman without religion, I may even go so far as to write that I am a woman without faith, but I am however a woman who likes the idea of praying.  I like thinking that if in fact there is god, god knows I am a good human and a loving person and will be receptive to my words, and I also like thinking that if there is no god, the universe is vast, and bigger and more beautiful than any of us can even begin to imagine and it’s magical that we are in it, and my words must go somewhere…So I have been praying and thinking about these women I love, some more intimately than others but love just the same…that’s the thing about love, it’s magnificent and it’s open to any possibility…it’ll go where I send it, no matter what…

I think what I am feeling is maybe a recognition that I want my time on this planet to be much more than breathing in and breathing out…there is so much that I wish to see, so much that I wish to do, so much that I wish to change, so much that I wish to stay the same…it’s all up to me, and what you wish for and dream to do is all up to you isn’t it?  What we do with the time we’ve got is our choice.  Who we choose to love, who we choose to lose, how we choose to find joy in little things or simple pleasures, or demand our happiness come from the big and the bold, how we spend our time, how we earn our pay, what we take in and what we send out…it’s all choices, time isn’t waiting for me to make them…like Joni says, “We’re captive on the carousel of time,  We can’t return we can only look behind from where we came,  And go round and round and round, in the circle game…