Let's Do the Time Warp

My apologies for the weather of late.

Seems my desire to slow down time has actually interfered with the arrival of spring.

It's not that I don't want sparkly, warm weather. I just am feeling a bit clingy about some things--and some people--these days, and if delaying spring can create the illusion that these people and things will stick around a little longer, well then, so be it.

Eric Bo Derrick--Lincoln High School Senior

I'm not a terribly sentimental mom. Heck, drop "sentimental" and the "ly" and you'd probably be getting a little closer to the truth. But I find a larger and larger part of my brain reserved with "Eric" thoughts these days.

He's really not a bad thing to fill one's brain with. Smart and funny and hard-working, he's six weeks out from finishing high school. And then? And then he's another four weeks out from a solo trip to Sweden.

(Did I mention that Eric is kind of brave and knows how to speak Swedish?)

After that? After that, he leaps into his own life, both feet forward, no longer "occupant" of this house, but rather "hungry visitor with a load of whites."

I will not get in his way, but that doesn't mean I'm anxious for these days to whiz by.

Gigi

Grandmothers had been in short supply in my life until I married Mark and inherited his fine grandmother, Evelyn Carlson, whom we call Gigi. She moved here after her husband Harry died and has spent the last 8 or 10 years of her life surrounded by her daughter, Cynthia, her grandchildren and a whole slew of great grandchildren.

She is funny and feisty and falling apart. In the hospital with pneumonia, it is hard for us to know what to feel right now. She is 97, after all. She has lived through droughts and depressions, world wars and the world wide web.

I do not know if she will live through this, though, and that makes me struggle with my sense of time. And place. And family.

Hobbes the Hobo Dog

Just in the past few days, it seems that time for Hobbes is accelerating. Thus the reason I do not want spring to have sprung. He falters on stair steps, winces when I pick him up and barely has noticed that, today, he went without our afternoon walk.

He has only been in my life for five or six years, but he has dug in those long claws and hooked them firmly around my heart.

There is something especially hard about watching an animal decline. It feels like an issue of trust, for some reason.

And so, I will spring not to come.

Andrea (she's on the right, next to that creepy clown)

Of all the aches in my days, my ache for Andrea is the one that makes me question my time-delaying super powers.

For her, just a month into what will be a long fight against leukemia, I hope that time will run downhill. For her, I hope that the days are but mere moments, collectively piling up without notice until, suddenly, it's fall again and routine has found its way back to her.

For her, I will allow the sun to shine tomorrow. For her, I will let warmth come over us once again.

At least for one day.