Best Girl

I call her Best Girl. She says I'm her Best Mum. Sometimes, if she's feeling expansive, she punctuates it with *ever.* She is my only girl, I am her only mum, but that doesn't matter. 

The world doesn't deserve her, I think. I say that less as an indictment of the world and more of a contemplation of her. She is the tenderest reed, the sweetest thing. The world will lick its cruel, greedy chops and chew her up. 

All around us, seven-year-olds are growing up. Parents see glimpses of the teenagers and adults they will become. The troubled world does deserve all their brightness and promise, their curious minds and energy. I can see them all grown up, but not her, never her.

My girl, my best girl, should never belong to the world. She's from somewhere else, from away.

We hold hands on this darkling plain, then. 

Coffee spoons and other stolen references

When my sister, the baby of the family and a sweet, sunny-natured child, turned five, my dad asked her if she would stay that way. As an adult, I now appreciate the poignance and bittersweetness of that moment — a father noting how quickly his own life was passing, through the passing of his youngest child's babyhood. It was a futile, romantic way of requesting that time stand still.


A year later, on her sixth birthday, my father gently chided my sister: she had broken her promise and hadn't stayed five. "I tried, Dad," she said. "But I couldn't help it."


None of us can. Time happens, whether we will it or no.


As any kid knows, "Boy, time flies!" has to be one of the lamest, most unoriginal things adults say. We spend our early years having no concept of time, and not really caring. At some point, we evolve into obsessive merchants and counters of time. It's one of the more lamentable aspects of adulthood. We grow up, and never seem to get the balance right, in spite of all the practice we get at measuring out our lives, staring at our watches and our datebooks. We're either killing time when bored, or rushing about when it seems to be slipping away.


We can wish away entire months of our lives, looking forward to a fleeting, two-week holiday. It's entirely unreasonable, and still we do it.


We are all living in the moment — we can't do anything but — and yet it can be challenging to do that with vigour, purposefulness and grace. It's easy in theory, tougher in practice. Paying too much heed to the ticking of the clock can create anxiety. The impulse might be to fill up the days, to make them busy and important, to gather memories. But such an approach also has the curious effect of making time seem to pass even more quickly.



But if we are to slow down the march of time by doing less, the act of doing "nothing" with our time can create feelings of guilt. We are sorry for wasted time, vow to squeeze life, use the good dishes every day and do and be more with our time.

The funny thing about time is that although it is constant, it seldom seems that way. A week is a week is a week, and yet it changes as we age. As Pink Floyd points out in the song Time: "The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older."

When school lets out for the summer, the miracle of two free months stretches out forever to a child. There is a reason time seems to pass more slowly then. To a 10-year-old, summer vacation represents a much larger proportion of the lifetime-to-date than it does for his 40-year-old parent. The child has only a handful of summers to reflect upon; the adult has many more, some of which may blur together.


Not only has a 40-year-old already lived through decades of summers, he or she has so many more things that have to be done now. Adult days are structured around the workplace, family responsibilities, social and community commitments and errands. Kids, having fewer responsibilities, are less mindful of the limits and demands of time. We don't say, "Oh, I'd love to, but I don't have the time" when we're seven.


Philosophical discussions about time always make my head hurt. That goes double for ones that involve physics and mathematical theories. I remember catching a couple of friends midway through a debate over whether time is an invention, a human observation, or an actual event. I'm glad I missed the original conversation, because the Reader's Digest version was painful enough. And when it comes to the concept of time-travel, forget it. I'm a dullard in matters of parallel universes.

I prefer the sentimental and poetic notions of time, even though time is seldom a pretty thing once we reach adulthood. There is never enough of it. It dictates all the pressures we feel, both real and perceived.

Our uneasy relationship with time is not a modern phenomenon. In the 17th century, poet Andrew Marvel wrote one of the loveliest poems about time, even though the narrator's motive was actually the wily seduction of a young woman.

In To His Coy Mistress, Marvel urges his reluctant mate to love with abandon, for there isn't time in this world to be shy. "Time's winged chariot" is always at our back, hurrying us and reminding us of the fragility and brevity of life.

The secret, the talent, to living one's life hasn't really changed with the centuries, then. Today's inspirational speakers talk about making the most of one's life and finding joy in ordinary lives. Three hundred years ago, Marvel offered his mistress this advice:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

September morn

One of the last summer sunrises of 2010. Change is good, but oh, how I hate to say goodbye.