And the painted ponies go up and down.

Suddenly, I have become intricately aware of the passage of time. Or, more accurately, of how unawares I was of time's quick and quiet escape from me. It has been over a decade since I entered law school, yet at times I still feel like a young lawyer, wide-eyed, idealistic, and insecure about my place in the practice of law. Nearly seven years have passed since I returned to Colorado, but often it seems as though I've only just come home after a long absence. My job feels new, still, but my tenure here is the longest of any job I've ever had. Friends of whom I still think as newlyweds are on their second child (or are signing divorce papers), and the kid I used to babysit turned 30.

The other day, some friends and I were talking about a party we'd attended a while back. The memory was fresh and vivid, and I was jolted to realize that the gathering had taken place five years ago. I've had similar reactions to a host of other events of late. I can still remember how I felt and who I was in relationships that have been history for ages. In my mind, the children of friends and relatives are still infants, though in reality they are soccer-playing, bar-mitzvah-having, high-school-graduating kids. (The latter problem may be exacerbated by the outdated pictures on my refrigerator, which I am attempting to update or at least replace with countless photos of my gorgeous nephew.)

I remember when my first serious boyfriend and I broke up during my clerkship, I had a silly, sobbing conversation with my mother about my fear of being 30 and alone. I was barely 26 at the time. Yet here I am in my 30s, still single, still dating, still doing the same things in my spare time, still experiencing many of the same fears and insecurities and frustrations in life and love and work. I suppose that I am a little bit wiser, more mature, and more capable than I was three or five or ten years ago. I have progressed in my career, and I've had marvelous travels and adventures. But those around me seem to change and grow and progress and move forward in their lives, while I stay mostly the same.

And suddenly, in recent weeks, I have become aware of just how much time has sped past me. Not in the proverbial bio-clock-ticking-away sense, but as a rush of memory and history and age and wonderment and sadness. I find myself searching for where the years have gone and wondering what I have to show for them aside from the bags under my eyes and the callouses on my feet and the not-quite-so-perkiness of my perky parts.

It's a phase. I know it's a phase. As much a part of the passage of time as my awareness of time itself. But at once, I want to slow everything down to a pace at which I can see and evaluate all that has passed and is happening and accelerate it all so I can get to what comes next and learn whether and when all that I wish for will come to pass.

Comments

[Kenna]

You are not alone. I feel the same way. Four years since I left my marriage? Five years since my nephew was born? Where did the time go?

[mad]

Exactly. I suppose that this is what happens once we're out of school for a while, and time is not so easily demarcated into chunks by semesters and breaks and graduations and whatnot.