Time

The other day (and by that I mean anywhere from earlier today to 8 months ago) a friend of mine posted a picture of her child. He's very young by standards of someone who is currently raising teens/almost teens, and she commented about time. In true "my kids are older than yours: fashion, I posted a picture of Female Offspring and Male Offspring, as small children. She was a cute kid with curly red hair, big blue eyes and freckles and he had cheeks for days with big blue eyes. My kids were (and really still are) gorgeous. Said friend, who knows my children from school, commented and we exchanged a couple of thoughts about kids growing up. At some point in the conversation, she said "time is a thief" and that got me thinking. Time has a lot of pressure put on it. This is especially true when it comes to our children. 

If you have ever been in the middle of a long car ride and one of your children gets cranky then time seems to stand still. It's as if you are never going to get to the point where you can get out of the car. (I want to be clear that this doesn't stop happening when they become teenagers. Mine are great travelers and we still have our moments.) If you have ever been waiting to hear back from your pediatrician while you hold a sick baby in your lap, it starts to feel like time is almost running backwards. It's horrible, it's painful, it physically weighs down on you like a ton of bricks. 

On the other hand, we have a family portrait on our wall taken less than two years ago on vacation, and the children in that picture barely resemble the Offspring. So time clearly moved way too fast in that sense. This year, on the way to verification for Female Offspring, she made the comment that this was the last time I would ever drive her to school and I began to cry because how can that be possible? How can there be such an amazing young lady beside me who is thinking about the fact that she'll drive in less 2 years? (She'll be taking the bus until then.)  

As I have mentioned in the past, my dad passed away unexpectedly in December of 2016. There are days when that phone call feels like it was yesterday and then there are days when I think "wow, four years already?". None of those days are easier than others when it comes to the loss of my dad. Time hasn't "healed" that pain. Actually, I think it's a little unfair to expect time to heal something like that. That's a lot of pressure. 

We shouldn't expect time to heal that kind of thing, any more than we expect it to stand still so our babies never grow up. We are asking time to give us something that isn't natural. We are asking time to give us immortality by being exactly what we want it to be and that's not fair. That's not life and it's not living. That's preserving our expectations in a capsule and expecting the world around us to wait.  

Time isn't cruel. It's not a miracle working healer (for those deep cuts), either. Time is a merchant. He is peddling his wares to everyone at the market. In the case of the loss of someone you love, like my father, time doesn't offer to heal us. What he does do is offer us a beautiful scar filled with the love and memories of that person. It's the kind of scar that when you touch it, you can still remember the pain that the wound inflicted, but you can also remember the joy and the love. When it comes to the theft of our babies, time offers us memories and moments that will never disappear in exchange for the loss of those babies that we treasure so deeply. 

In the Orthodox church there are two particular phrases that we use often that this topic reminds me of. One is the phrase used after someone passes "Memory Eternal" is used as a way of honoring the person who has passed, comforting the person you are speaking with and praying that God will always remember the deceased all in one breath. "May God grant you many, many years" is the phrase used whenever we are celebrating a particular personal event (wedding, anniversary, name day, birthday, etc). This one is pretty self explanatory. We are literally praying that God grants this person/these people many, many years of life. Can we really ask for more than those two things? Is it really fair for us to ask something of time (to stand still) that we wouldn't ask God for? I miss my blue eyed, big cheeked babies. I really do, but God didn't ask me to parent babies forever. He asked me to raise my children so that they can be in this world, but not of it and the only way I can do that is to ask Him to give them many, many more years. I will continue to cherish the beautiful scar left by the loss of my father and the lovely moments that time exchanges for the fact that my children are growing up, because time is just doing the job God has asked him to do. 

Annual Santa visit - this will always be a cherished tradition. (Here's a secret - that's my dad)

I love this picture.

These are my "babies" now.