End of the year ponderings...

“I don’t know where the time has gone…”

Adults say it constantly, and more and more often as we age. Long ago I was fascinated to learn during a visit to the Boston Science Museum that this sensation is physical. Apparently, half your heart beats are over by the time you’ve finished your twelfth year. As you get older, your heart actually slows down. Because your own internal sense of time is based upon heart beats—or, the space between each heart beat—you have a subjective notion, as you grow older and your heart slows down, that time is “flying,” racing away. Fewer beats, equals longer spaces equals a fan-like folding of perception. We all remember the sensation we had as children of there being an eternity between the beginning of summer and the end, of eons between June and the State Fair (which I loved). Not to mention that incredible long stretch between the opening of school in September and the Christmas holidays!

My grandma used to admonish, “Don’t wish your life away.” Unfortunately, I don’t think there is really any way around it. After our childhood experience of “endless summer,” or those equally never-ending hours watching a crawling clock in school or later on inevitable slow days at a first job, it’s hard to get out of the habit of believing we’ve got “plenty.” to spare. As a result, we “waste” it, “fill it,” rush through it without savoring it, the bright blue sky, the sun, or the rain, that we’ve been given.

I’ve reached the plateau from which, (without me being able to say exactly how or when I arrived,) my “elders” are, one by one, making a permanent departure. Each day, no matter how dull, has wings. Suddenly, I’m the top of the family tree, the one who answers to “Grandma.”

“Time not only flies, it accelerates.” I tell this to my granddaughter, who has just finished her first semester in college. On the phone, I hear her pause before she replies.

“Yes,” she says slowly. “I noticed it for the first time last summer, after graduation. Then, again after my birthday party, when everyone was talking about going to college, or getting jobs. Somebody said: “Wow! How’d this happen? We used to be in kindergarten together.”

We talk about it a bit, and I realize she’s accelerated to adult consciousness, and is already at work, assessing past and future. I don’t have to make my usual half-joking remark about “Time flies, whether you are having fun or not.” She already knows it.