Slow ride…

Seasons pass more quickly than they used to, it seems.  Perhaps these fleeting days are just the mortality clock, with its ominous ticking, in the background of our lives.

Once, it felt like winter would never release its icy grip as we waited for spring to awaken, followed by summer’s warm embrace.  Autumn would wrap our world in magical colors and we so looked forward to the first snow of the year.  We knew that our ride on the carousel of seasons would continue.  What we didn’t realize was how our perspectives would change as the years suddenly moved faster and we wished that ride went slower.

As we age, we experience time differently having seen and done so many things as time has passed; emotions get in the way of an accurate perception of time. Whatever the case might be, as we get older, our focus remains on the rapid changes surrounding us at a time when we just want life to be in less of a hurry.

Ferris Bueller reminded us when he said “life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it.”

From Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop…Write a blog post in exactly 9 lines.
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Time traveler…

 

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As a child, I couldn’t wait for time to pass.  What kid doesn’t?  In fact, I often prayed that it would just skip or run along at a maddening pace and move me to a better place.  But, almost like a punishment, it moved even slower and at times it felt as if it was moving in reverse.  All I could do was imagine what the future might be like if, and when, I arrived at my long-visualized moment in time.

I know, I know, be careful what you wish for.  I hear you Aesop, loud and clear.  Wishes are all a child might have on the twisted road leading to adulthood.  And childhood dreams are a pathway, even a needed escape.

Suddenly, you find yourself right here only now you look back and wish all that time was still in front of you.  The chance of any moments standing still, even lingering like a lazy summer afternoon, have become one more forgotten dream.

 

workshop-button-1From Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop… Write a blog post in exactly 10 lines.

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So many marbles. How much time?

Marbles.  You can be accused of losing them or still have them locked away in a velvet pouch, guarding each brilliant glass sphere from the ravages of time.

Alzheimer’s disease crept in years ago and brutally made off like a thief in the night with my late mother’s collection.  Since her death, my own fear of ending up almost mindless, a stranger in my family’s midst, pushes me constantly to exercise my brain, holding onto those marbles that make up who I am.

Then, there is that time issue; one which people often write about.  One heartwarming story, 1,000 Marbles, was written by Jeffrey Davis years ago, about a ham radio conversation he listened to, well, it touched me deeply.  I share part of it with you…

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whoever he was talking with something about “a thousand marbles”.  I was intrigued as I listened to what he had to say….

  
You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.”
 
“Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime.”
 
 ” It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail”, he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.”
 

“So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away.”

“I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.” 

“Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.” 

 

      

Since reading this, I’ve stocked-up on marbles as well as a variety of jars in which to keep them.  Call it my personal investment in time, call it crazy, call it what you will.  With each passing week, I remove just one colorful ball of my past and comfort myself with those that remain. 

And I hope…for time.

 

 

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 From Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop...Write a blog post inspired by the word time.  

I wrote this several years ago, ten to be exact, and time remains on the forefront of every single moment of my existence.  Probably the same for most of us, I imagine.  Each day begins with a plan, a goal, and what seems like an endless “to do” list, while a clock looks over my shoulder.

 
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