How do you do the math to make one of these? Hank asked, carrying the blue plastic hourglass that sat on the bathroom counter, a remnant of the boys' learning to brush their teeth for an appropriate length of time.
I have no idea how to do the math to make an hourglass, but we talked about the volume of sand and the diameter of the center hole, about measuring and investigating and how he could maybe create his own formula...
I have no idea how to do the math to make an hourglass, but we talked about the volume of sand and the diameter of the center hole, about measuring and investigating and how he could maybe create his own formula...
What I do know about is the way time slips, how it flies, how it spreads across the calendar and how we try to squeeze it in. I am acutely aware of the way it feels to hug the boy who was, just yesterday, the size of a kitten, a jellybean. I see time in long hair hanging over the math that's suddenly way harder than long division. There is aural evidence in time's ability to bury sweet little lemon drop voices in gravel.
What I do know is that time does not heal all wounds. That time forces the regular role of buying new pants to cover ankles, of buying more cereal to keep bellies full. That perceived as running out, say around things like a senior year on the horizon, it can lead to urgency and temptation to control. That it often feels like tumbling forward with each new question, propulsion with every syllable.
Hank stands with a tool meant to measure time mere inches from my face. I remind myself to pay attention. In a few years, in a blink, he will have more answers than I do.
