Time

 What a funny thing time is. It has a mind all its own.  

Never caring what you might think, it plods along at just the wrong speed.

If you must wait, time slows to a crawl, ticking by as slowly as it can. 

If you're having the time of your life, time races past you in the blink of an eye. 

You hardly have time to realize the full wonder of the moment when it's suddenly a day, a week, a year later and you're standing there in your memories wondering how you got there.

Even stranger still is how time changes over, well, time.

I remember as a child my birthday was always forever away.  A year seemed unimaginable in my young mind.  I knew it somehow always came again but trying to think of all the things I would have to see and do and explore and learn before my next birthday was more than I could dream of.  Even days seemed like such vast amounts of time.  Oh, the promises each day held then, and still now sometimes.

And yet, as I've grown, I've come to realize that each year is shorter than the last.  Yes, it is always a steady 365 days, but the days get all funny sometimes.  Every day, every week, every year is now a smaller portion when compared to the rest of my life.  Now, I sometimes feel that I've hardly opened my eyes to the new day when I'm already crawling back into bed. 

As Christmas rolls back around I'm finding myself face to face with memories from last year. Sometimes the memories seem so near, so ready to be recalled, to be picked up and treasured again, that they can't have happened a whole year ago.  And yet, here I am again, picking out paper and watching our house slowly turn towards Christmas.  

I find myself wondering about the coming year, what new memories will be made, which ones made this year will find there way back into my thoughts as I walk to class, or work on a project, or set up our Christmas tree.  And I look forward to it.  To another year of gathering up memories and storing them away to think of again as the years roll by.  

Kate