25 Years and a Hundred Dollars

From what I can recall, I'm pretty sure these are the ceilings of time and cost when you are a child. What's the oldest a person could be to a 3-year-old? 25 years old. How much does it cost to buy Disney-World or a swimming pool or 25 packs of gum? A hundred dollars.

As we get older, the world gets larger, and it's hard to wrap your mind around a limit to time, to cost, to wealth.

We went to a memorial service this weekend and I took some pictures (no, etiquette police, I took them AFTER the service, during the dinner reception that afternoon). The girls have a huge family on their dad's side so it's always an event when we are able to have many, if not most, of them under one roof. The girls got to play with their cousins and just generally run around looking cute and rubbing everyone's noses in the fact that time passes so quickly. Isn't that so strange they way our society often gauges how much time has passed by how much other people's children have changed?

"Hey, do you have a watch on you? What time is it? I've been so consumed by the task at hand that I have no idea how long we've been here."

"No I don't, but the sun was just coming up when we started and it looks like it's beginning to set. We must have been here all day."

When people see my girls and say that, I admit I feel this little twinge of guilt. When they comment on how much they've grown and changed, I wish I could feel confident that I've gotten the most out of each of every day with them.

But I don't.

There are many days that I feel as though I'm on auto-pilot, with one eye on finishing the task at hand so I can move on to the next...thing...the next place. What a terrible, wasteful way to use up a day. What am I ultimately gaining by rushing to get the girls out the door so I can rush to work so I can rush through my work so I can rush to get the girls so I can rush to get dinner ready so we can rush through dinner so I can rush to get them in the shower so I can rush to get them in bed so we can all get up in the morning to minimize how much rushing we have to do the next morning? No matter how much I think about, I have trouble figuring out a way to complete the tasks that I have deemed necessary without compromising time with the people that I work so hard for.

Honestly, maybe it's easier to live like this. Life is unpredictable and sometimes almost unbearably difficult, so I think many of us power through our days, measuring how copacetic things are by how few roadblocks we encounter.

I'm not preaching or wallowing in cynicism. Cats in the Cradle is not humming in my mind. It's just that I see pictures like this one of Maria and I see what everyone else saw last weekend. She no longer requires her mommy to make all of her decisions for her. Granted, she will need abundant guidance for years to come (decades, if I have it my way). She may still be a little girl for many more years, but she is, by no means, a defenseless newborn or ball-of-developing-ego toddler, she is her own person.

So, what's the significance of the Ava picture, you ask? None. She's just really cute and I love how peaceful she appears to be. She's the antithesis of peaceful. She is the poster child for Pediatric Voice Immodulation.

I have no witty, clever bow to wrap around this post. Maybe I just really need a vacation...and a large sum of money so we can buy our happiness.