Not Growing Up, Not Growing Old.
Last weekend at my parents' house I caught myself checking my phone. Nothing was waiting for me. No message, no alert. I just wanted to know what happened in the last forty minutes, as if forty minutes of coffee and slow talk was something to recover from.
I saw them getting older now. They move a little slower. There is more medicine to collect. They are not as big as a mountain like they used to, the way I feared them when I was small. But the love is all the same.
With my son it is the same. An hour of lego blocks feels long, a car race on the sofa feels forever, and I mean that as a compliment. I am not waiting for anything. He does not need me fast. He needs me there. If I rush him, I am not with him at all. I am only near him. I learned the difference between those two words from him.
That is the part I keep thinking about. At work I am the same person in a different direction. New solutions, new tools, the week I am living in is always the least interesting one. I tell myself I love how fast it moves. But do I? If I am always waiting for the next thing, I never actually enjoy the current one. Maybe what I love is not the speed. Maybe it is the “not-yet”.
Here is the contradiction I cannot resolve. At work I want time to sprint. With my parents and my son, I want time to stall. Not growing up, not growing old. I want them where they are. I know that is not how time works. Knowing it does not make the wanting stop.
I do not have a practice for this yet.