The Hour Glass

As a kid I would sit at the counter which divided our kitchen and dining room and place the small three-minute egg timer upside down and watch as the sand moved from the top to the bottom. It was magical to me in so many ways. How did they get the sand in there? How did they know that much sand would take three minutes to move through the tiny hole in the middle? How could they make that tiny space the right size?

My biggest question, though, was, “Why is that the sand seems to go more quickly when it gets closer to the end of the three minutes?”

The other day, I told someone I think life is like the sand in that little glass. At the beginning, it feels like there is so much time, but now that it approaches the final decade or two, if I’m lucky, I feel that same hurry that happens in the egg timer. In truth the sand is moving at the same speed all the way through the process but at the end it seems to be moving so much more quickly.

I don’t suppose there are too many of us who don’t feel some regret as we move toward our final years, but the adage is true: we really do have more regret for what we didn’t do than for what we did.

There is a sense of urgency for me now. I want to read more, learn more, do more, write more, and explore more than I ever have. My knees don’t want me to move more, and we argue about that a lot - my knees and I.

It seems strange to want to learn and do more because what is the point? Why would I want to absorb so much more of life when, at my passing, all that learning will be lost? It’s not like I can put it in my Will, though, part of me wishes there was some way to do that.

Because I love to write, I am working on a memoir I began two summers ago. I think that is when the urgent feeling began. It pushed me to write 80,000 words in six weeks. Now those words sit here on the computer waiting for me to get my “it has to be perfect” hat off and put on the “just edit the damn thing” hat.

My hopes of doing that big edit last summer when I wasn’t driving the school bus went the way of knee surgery and a difficult recovery, which still has me tethered to a cane and pain. I’ve tried a few times to settle into a routine of editing between bus runs this year but those attempts have gone awry.

Two weeks and three days from now the summer begins in earnest and I’m counting on you and this quickly emptying hour glass panic to keep me on track. If I don’t answer the phone I’ll be sitting here at the computer working. If you really want to talk come to the door. I’d love to visit but we can only have a short visit - maybe lunch - and then I’ll get back to work.