I was growing older. I didn’t want to get older and I really didn’t want my parents to get older either. It’s not clear to me now which thought was worse in my mind back then.
My mom and dad took turns laying next to me consoling my deep sadness as their little boy grappled with his own mortality for the first time. They rubbed my back and reassured me that it would be all right and that I was all right.
Now I’m my parents and my kids are me in my story from back then, and my little girl is really struggling with getting to sleep at the end of these summer days. We are telling her what we were told.
“It’s moving too fast!” She said at dinner last night. “The summer is moving too fast!” Life is moving too fast for her right now. “I’m already seven!” She whimpered the other evening.
Too fast Daddy!
Hey @Raffi_RC Ella just literally realized she “can reach the tap now for the very first time today!”
— Adam Olsen (@AdamPOlsen) May 12, 2019
I agree, it’s too fast! All of life is moving quicker now. I’ve written about the busy-ness of modern life a few times. I was sitting at the ferry with my friend the other day and we were talking about email and all the other digital connection points that are overwhelming us with expectation and unnecessarily filling our lives with “stuff” to do.
“Imagine what it would be like if we were back in the day when we wrote a letter,” I said.
“And you sent it and had to wait for the response to come back in the mail,” she said, finishing my sentence.
Exactly. I think we are all feeling how fast life is moving. It’s so full we bounce from one thing in the schedule to the next. No doubt I chose a particularly demanding vocation, but it’s all of life really. As Raffi sang in his famous song, before you know it you can reach the tap, and then…
Email, texting, social media, time management apps and every other tech tool we design to make life more “convenient” is really only sucking the attention of the precious few minutes we have away from us. They are increasing the expectations we have of each other and are just another distraction from the real work of slowing the pace of life, enjoying each other’s company and not growing up (or old) too quickly.
I love you Ella. Kid, you are growing up good!
As is often the case, your musings twig a memory fir me. This time it was of me being a child Ella’s age and watching my Mother, an English war bride, write the weekly air msil letter back to her own Mother in England. From the time she came to Canada at the end of WW ll she and her Mother would both write a weekly letter. She only saw her Mother once again in 1960 when part of the money for the expensive airfare to England was borrowed so that she and I could make the trip to see all the relatives there. It was the only time that I ever saw that Grandmother. And how things have changed! One of my daughters and now three grandchildren are living in the UK. I have suuficient funds to travel to visit them, and indeed I was there for the birth of each one. They have travelled home to Victoria each summer. I can “visit” with them any day of the week via facetime.
A long missive, but just felt good getting those thoughts out.