Counting

On April 1st, 2010, I wrote numbers of days on my calendar to help me get through the next three months. March had just ended and I remember feeling like I was on the home stretch...just the very, very beginning of the home stretch.

And now it's July 1st.

This year so far, I've done a lot of wishing time would pass. If I'm on a seven-hour shift at work it's how long until lunch, how long until coffee break, how long until I can go home. During the week it's how long until the weekend. I'm shocked that it's July 1st and I'm leaving for Mexico in two days, and that it's actually the summer. I never thought it would get here, when I was mired the depths of February.

There are still numbers written on my calendar. I'm counting the number of weeks left that I work, and the number of days until my Texan comes to see me, and I'm tempted to start counting the days until my residence move-in, which is September 5.

But I also feel a little like I need to stop counting. Maybe I need to stop looking at the clock or the calendar at all. Because things are happening now, every day, that I don't want to miss. (Sentimentality aside, however, how exactly does one 'savor a moment'? I've tried. Usually it amounts to a slightly panicky feeling of "oh no, it's leaving!") I clue in now, when I wake up in the morning not looking forward to something, that it's going to be over really fast, and every night when I go to bed I marvel at how short a time it was since I was last getting ready for bed.

The home stretch is going to end. I'm going to Mexico. I'm coming back and working for four weeks, spending a week with my Texan, spending three weeks getting ready for Ambrose, and then it'll be here. HERE. And I'LL be THERE.

I always thought that story about the boy with the ball of golden string who could pull on it a little and make time pass faster was, of fairy stories, significantly more obnoxious than the others. But it is inescapably true.