Sunday, August 10, 2014

Hold On: Time Is Flying

This morning when I went to the market, there were three or four couples, one over 80, one mid 50’s and one in their teens, holding hands.  They were not giving each other love glances nor were they making out in the parking lot. They were simply walking into the market holding hands.  Holding hands is my favorite expression of love. It is intimate and caring without being overtly sexual.  You can do it in public without someone yelling for you to get a room. But it can be equally personal, like when you are in bed, just before you fall asleep and the tenderest way to say I love you is to touch one another without any pain. Kissing is also good but it doesn’t last as long and holding on to one another.  It’s possible to wake up in the morning still holding hands and never thinking more about it than you would a “good morning”.  But when it is missing you notice and feel the absence. 

Enough mushy sentimentality.  At one point or another someone has said to us, or we have said to someone, “Don’t rush your life away.”  When we are 10 we dream about being 20. When we are 20, we want to be 21 so we can buy a drink, or it turns out a pack of cigarettes.  All of a sudden we are 40, or 50, or 60, and we just want to be 20 or 30 or 40.  My Grandfather use to warn us that life was like a train. When you are young you are on the Local. Then (and it seems to happen overnight), you are on the Express.  Platitudes like ‘live everyday to the fullest,’ or ‘live for today because you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,’ make some sense, sometimes. But not in retail.  The market and Dollar Store I visited today are already displaying Halloween crap.  Costco has hundreds of kid’s costumes on display.  And if you like Candy Korn, the time has come to buy, buy, buy.

How can we reconcile not wishing our lives away with the ever present next holiday?  This summer went very quickly.  August is almost gone (which I start to feel the second week of every month), and available to all of us are Halloween costumes.  Nevermind the Jewish Holidays in September, when as children we got to buy one special outfit (not for school) for Services. We don’t have time to take a breath before we are buying turkeys, holiday cards, and presents ad nauseum.  Then it’s next year and we have to learn to sign our checks differently. I would like to live life to the fullest, but who has time?  We rush through the day, the night, the month and the year. Finally when we take a breath we are not 30, or 40 or 60.

Sometimes, and only sometimes,  I want to stay in bed with my beloved puppy, and possibly David, and just hold on to a hand or some fur, for days, just watching the time pass.  I know that I will never relive the minute that has just passed, but I want to remember how much I enjoyed it.  Alas, now it’s time to weed the garden, make dinner, and write a blob do it’s time to get out of bed.  We’re just sayin’ Iris

No comments: