Time

I wonder as I age about the (my) concept of time. One definition I found on that vast and scary Internet is "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole:"

The indefinite part is not totally accurate.  Time does move on and new things begin while old things end.  That is NOT indefinite.  The actual when and where may be indefinite.  

My husband's dementia is with us every day.  It moves forward very slowly but even that is a frightening pace of movement.  

My body and its aging fight me tooth and nail.  If I fail to exercise both brain and body for any length of time I become some stiff robot crossing the room.

One gift from aging is perspective.  My first grandchild is in his first year of college and I wish I could dump on him tons of wisdom.  But one cannot force-feed a young adult who is already being bombarded with all kinds of demands, events, new situations, and challenges.  I think all of us elders wish we could pass along perspective.  Maybe in the future that can be done with technology, but actually, that does sound a bit scary.  Lessons learned from a lack of perspective can be valuable.

I sent him a box of cookies and candy and Halloween stuff.  He texted back:

Thanks so much for the package!  I just received it and I love the Halloween stuff.  I just realized that I have no decorations so this will be useful.  College so far has been very fun and I've been finding my people.  I've been addicted to the rock climbing gym here and I'm also really enjoying the food.  The workload had been a little annoying but I'm sure I'll get used to it....

I would like to be him.  He has a better attitude toward college than I did.  He is an introvert but realizes that he must make an effort for friendships.  I did not realize that either.

This cup in the photo above is something that he gave me many Christmases ago.  I have several from each of the grandchildren and their worth is beyond any amount of money I could ever get.  I was once told the story of the two on either side of the highway on the cup but sadly forgot.  That is something I may ask again.  Just looking at that cup really takes my breath away.  It is time travel.  It is its own time machine.