How does an eternity become a memory?
A mere month ago, we were frozen in time.
Literally.
Ice covered our yards, walkways, driveways, cars and roads. Most of us were stuck in our houses for one or even two weeks.
For some, it was a pleasant break from daily routine. For others, though, it was a tortuous time of biting cold.
Some houses just can’t get warm when the temperatures fall below normal. That’s even though their resulting heat bill would soar above the cost of their mortgage payment or rent, would surpass one or two week’s pay.
Their inhabitants feel the sharp stab of cold all morning, day, night long, and with the iced-over roads, there is no escape.
If the power is out — which this time, thankfully, miraculously, it was not, for most people — the cold suffocates you like a heavy weight, impossible to get out from under. It will never end.
Until.
Like a snap of the fingers, here we are, the sun gently caressing our cheeks as we look with delight over the blooming daffodils, muscari, crocus.
Was that never-ending cold just a figment of our imaginations?
That trickery of time has plagued us all our lives.
Safely embraced in the bosom of our grandmother, we cuddled after lunch, suspended in time as that one marker of our routine was over, and the hours and minutes until the next marker of routine, supper, was an eternity away.
High on the excitement of the game or the music, we played and played or danced and danced as if reveling in the physical body were the only thing life was about, until, surprisingly, the game or the dance was over.
We laid in a lover’s arms, the world around us stopped, nonexistent, because this feeling of love and passion was the only thing there existed.
We rocked the baby, then held the toddler; and now we hope they remember us with a visit or at least answer our call.
Always, the “forever” becomes the memory.
We remember with disbelief the torment of the biting cold wind which, in these gentle days of flowers and sunshine, does not seem to have been possible.
The leaves green, the petals unfurl, and the birds chatter and fly. And because by now we have learned how fleeting it is, we soak in every minute with delight and wonder.
