Company

Acting as a chaperone
and posing as a friend
Time came along with us
but skulked off by himself
before I got to know you.

After you had gone
he returned like guilt
and stayed the night.

In fact, he stayed all week.

15 October 1989

I remember my dad telling me that time moved quicker when you got older. Or at least it appeared to. This seemed like total nonsense to me but that was only because I hadn’t lived long enough to realise how slowly time was moving for me. Everything took forever back then. I remember later being told if you’re pregnant and already have a wee one don’t tell them there’s another baby on the way until a month or two before you’re due date because nine months is an eternity to a small child and they’ll be asking you every day if it’s time yet.

Time with B. zipped past. No sooner had we met and she was saying goodbye. And when was I going to see her again? When? When?

2 comments:

Ken Armstrong said...: Time now moves very fast. Not so much hour to hour or even day to day but, yes, year to year and decade to decade. I sometimes sit on the couch to try to slow it down a b bit. :); 12 February 2017 at 23:40
Jim Murdoch said...: I just had a brief exchange with Carrie, Ken. I said to her, “You know yesterday when you asked me what day it was. I told you it was Saturday. It wasn’t. It was Sunday. It’s Monday now.” To which she replied, “I didn’t ask you what day it was yesterday. I asked you on Saturday and you told me correctly it was Saturday. You’ve lost a day.”

How can anyone lose a day? I mean a whole day! But it does illustrate it perfectly. I’ll check e-mails where I’m waiting for a reply thinking it’s been a week and it’s been three. I don’t get it. I was led to believe that as you got older you needed less sleep and I remember when I was young looking forward to being able to get by on three hours a night. Just imagine all the work I could get done! And yet here I am creeping up on sixty and sleeping like it’s going out of fashion. If we’re so damn evolved how come we haven’t learned to sleep like the dolphins shutting down half of the brain at a time?; 13 February 2017 at 02:23

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