Kimberlee K.

Everywhere you turn you can hear someone commenting on the passage of time—either how quick or how slow.

The beginning of the year, for me, always moves the slowest. I constantly find myself asking, “is it STILL January?!” Because I’m so anxious to get on with it, to dive headfirst into the newness and see what there is to find.

Summer on the other hand, always moves fast.

As a kid, it moved fast because there was a clock ticking down to the return of school, and every time I woke up I knew I was inching closer and closer to August, to September, to homework.

But as an adult it just…moves fast.

I blinked my way through June, July, and August and I can’t believe it’s fall. Days seem long, hot, and a bit of a slog at times, but somehow weeks are ripping off the calendar.

How does time do that? Pass fast and slow at the same time?

Because right now, big time—the time marking major shifts, the big old clock in the sky that only counts down—seems to be moving slow. Sometimes so slow I find myself catching my breath, relieved at how much time I have left, how young I am, despite what the world wants to tell me. Other times so slow I want to scream.

But small time is moving fast.

Like my library account that logs me out every two weeks. Each time it asks for my password I pause, wondering, already?

Or my standing chiropractor appointment every six weeks, where each time I drive up I try to remember where I’ve been, what I can update her on, even though it feel like I was just there.

Every year on the day after Christmas, in the come down of all the excitement, I think, before I know it, it will be Christmas again.

And then it always is.

And while the 365 days in between are sometimes slow and there is so much stuffed into that year’s sandwich, it’s always a bit of a shock, like, there goes another one.

So I know that time is, in fact, flying, and occasionally it feels like I can hear it whizzing by.

I don’t want to miss anything. To sit idly by as days and weeks rip off the calendar. But some seasons move quicker than others, and some blur with grief, anxiety, and brokenness.

Maybe the only thing I can do is let the tiny mile markers remind me that I’m here, whether it be every two weeks, every two months or every two years. I want to find ways to remember, and to fight against the call of modern technology to take a seat and numb my way through.

Time will continue to pass, regardless of whether I notice or not, and while I don’t want to spend my life nervously counting down, like I did in those summer months as a kid, I also don’t want to let it swallow me up, too quick to keep track of.

So I’m looking for something in the middle. An awareness that I don’t have forever, but a determined patience to let time take time.  An ability to savor even the days and seasons I’d like to sprint through, because I know I never get to do any of it twice.