I once held the whole of time in the tiniest hands of a
child and then my hands grew. But
the abundance of time did not. It
is not the amount of time before us or behind us, it is simply the openness of
a hand to hold what we have - now.
I traced lemniscates with my finger, following a mobile over
my bed. I marveled how a superball
could bounce so high; how one man with an axe could take down a 60 year old
tree. Yet all the while – eternity
was held there in the darkness like a headboard of hope. I learned about arguing by listening to
those closest to me, through the walls – I didn’t like it, so I grew up listening less and found
that was the cause of even more arguments than my parents had. Sex education didn’t exist outside of
episodes of I Dream of Jeanie – as a high level thinking pre-adolescent, I
toiled with explanations thereby minimizing a monumental sensation that has existed
since the dawn of man. I deferred
understanding any of this through an emerging adolescent logic – faith had it
in for me that one day, a girl would drop from the sky and land on the erection
that first caused so much alarm.
It would all become clear then. Everyone was tormented with the significance of a recent
past because at such an age, we’d never fathomed the rest of our lives.
Yes, now my hand is large and calloused and holds but the tiniest
remains of time. My palms are etched with age like the crystal of my
grandfather’s watch. Time is
almost up, so why do I feel a mounting kinship with youth.
Life’s little hairpin turns
down the slippery slope of irony.
