I’m getting old!!! Don’t get me wrong, it’s not something that is traumatizing me (much!!) or anything like that, it’s just that I’ve really begun to notice how old I’ve started to feel in the last year. I’ve taken to listening to “The Bridge” on Sirius satelite radio in the mornings here at The Living Room. Since most of our morning customers are using the drive-thru rather than coming inside that time of day, I find myself turning it up loud (by my standards) and reminiscing with all those wonderful classic hits by the likes of Bob Seger, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, etc. It’s hard for me to admit that those songs from the days of my early adulthood (not my long-ago childhood) are now falling squarely into the “oldies” format; And they seem like they happened a LIFETIME ago for me!! Now, with the joys of arthritis locking up my lower extremities, along with the realization that I’m closer to fifty than I am to forty, I’ve come to the conclusion that I, too, have become an “oldie”.
I’ve never been one to get emotional about any of my so called “milestone” birthdays. It was no big deal when I turned 18 or 21, never got all worked up about turning 30 or 40; and I’m not at all dreading turning 50 in a couple of years. But…when my youngest child, my boy, turned 13 the other day (THIRTEEN, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!), I must admit, I struggled with that one. But, why? It’s not at all a bad thing (in fact it’s a pretty special thing) and it’s not his fault, right? So what was it?
Have any of you ever heard the country song from a couple of years ago titled “And Then They Do”, by Trace Adkins? It’s a pretty sweet and sentimental song about a dad (and for those of you who don’t know me very well, I’m a pretty sentimental dad, myself) watching the day to day life of his children, and then all of a sudden, without the dad seeing it coming…they’re all grown up. There’s one line in that song that kept going through my head as I prepared to celebrate my youngest becoming a teenager, and it made me a little sad; “I see them as babies, I guess that’ll never change”. WOW!!! Weren’t they just babies? Aren’t they still? Wasn’t I just that young buck working at the paper mill and spending all of his money at the Wigwam? Where does the time go?
And why does it go so fast?
I’d often heard people (much older people than me, I would always think), comment on how fast time goes. And now, suddenly, BAM!! I’m that (older) person.
Then, through the lyrics of that country song, it hit me…I never, ever realized how fast time went until I became a parent. And now ALL of my time is measured not through the usual days or years, but through them, through their lives. Kickball games. Basketball games. Trips to Disney World. Trips to “Sasquatch Hill”. Weren’t we just doing those things? I remember them so vividly, like they happened last week. With all due respect to Bob Seger and Billy Joel and everybody else still playing on “The Bridge”, those moments, moments of a lifetime, moments of their lifetimes, are my real “Classic Hits”!!
My son now joins my daughter as a teenager, and she will be driving next year!! And then? I don’t wish for much. I do, however, wish time didn’t go so fast. And I wish I could just hold onto their childhood for a little while longer. You see, just like the song says, I still see them as babies…I guess that’ll never change.
