I once held the whole of time in the tiniest hands of a child and then my hands grew. But the abundance of time did not. It is not the amount of time before us or behind us, it is simply the openness of a hand to hold what we have – now.
I traced lemniscates with my finger, following a mobile over my bed. I marveled how a superball could bounce so high; how one man with an axe could take down a 60 year old tree. Yet all the while – eternity was held there in the darkness like a headboard of hope. I learned about arguing by listening to those closest to me, through the walls – I didn’t like it, so I grew up listening less and found that was the cause of even more arguments than my parents had. Sex education didn’t exist outside of episodes of I Dream of Jeanie – as a high level thinking pre-adolescent, I toiled with explanations thereby minimizing a monumental sensation that has existed since the dawn of man. I deferred understanding any of this through an emerging adolescent logic – faith had it in for me that one day, a girl would drop from the sky and land on the erection that first caused so much alarm. It would all become clear then. Everyone was tormented with the significance of a recent past because at such an age, we’d never fathomed the rest of our lives.
Yes, now my hand is large and calloused and holds but the tiniest remains of time. My palms are etched with age like the crystal of my grandfather’s watch. Time is almost up, so why do I feel a mounting kinship with youth.
Life’s little hairpin turns down the slippery slope of irony.
