The dance continues at a faster pace than ever...some days I feel I just can't keep up! One day you are celebrating a plus sign on a pee stick, & the next thing you know there is a tiny mouthful of words shouting at you & little arms & legs going from 0 to 100 in 60 seconds. Then BAM! it hits you, your little girl is going to grow up & there really is nothing you can do to stop it. OK, so I remember a time when Scarlett was this fascinating creature that basically just slept, ate, cried & pooped & people kept telling me it goes by so fast, but I didn't believe them because it felt like time was almost standing still. As she picks up her tempo, it seems time does as well, in a number of ways.
Do you remember when you were a young child, how a year seemed to take for ever? Well my hubby once put it all into perspective for me. When you are 5, a year is only 1/5 of your life, so relatively, it is a pretty large portion of the life that you have lived, & therefor feels much slower in comparison to when you are 10, 15, or 25, because the older you get the smaller fraction a year becomes of your life (1/10, 1/15, or 1/25, etc) so it feels like it is going by a lot faster, relative to the rest of your life. I hadn't thought about it before this was explained t to me (& partly ashamed that I didn't think of it myself), but it makes total sense, the concept fascinated me. However, I had never considered the effect it would have on me when it comes to my child's life.
I remember, for some reason, time slowing down significantly for me about a month before I got pregnant. I found it to be a strange sensation, whether it was because work was slow & I wasn't super busy (I'm always busy, just sometimes less busy) or some other phenomenon, I hadn't felt time slow down so much in a long long time. Pregnancy dragged out, & I was never once surprised I was already 6 or 8 or almost 10 months along (that I can recall) because it didn't feel at all that it flew by - especially the first few months, although a blur. Scarlett came along, those first few days at home seemed like a year in themselves, but still although she was changing so much every day, it didn't really hit me until she was about 6 months. At the turn of the New Year, I said to Rodd, "That was a long year." It seemed forever ago that we vacationed in Mexico (probably because I knew deep down that it would be our last vacation in a while).
However, as Scarlett gets older, time has begun to accelerate again. The busier she gets, the busier I get, the busier everything around me gets, & I can honestly say that life has resumed it's turbo pace, that I remember prior to 2010. Perhaps this is partially due to an automatic rhythm that we have together created, tuning in to one another's needs through our very communication, making a new melody (for every relationship a new melody is created, based on each person's rhythm). As each day becomes a smaller fraction of her life, I experience the acceleration with her. Together we keep each other up to pace. For her, I imagine it still feels quite slow, but I experience the accumulation of my ever-decreasing fraction along with hers, so the pace of my beat is picking up significantly.
The more dance partners you let into your step, the more complicated your melody gets, & it becomes a real challenge to keep the beat. But at the same time life becomes far more interesting & rewarding.
So you think to yourself, this could be a very depressing way to look at life. Well, to me I don't see it that way, it is simply an observation, but more so an invitation to challenge time - to beat the beat. To take a moment when life feels like it is travelling at warp zone speeds, & slow it down to a calmer beat. To get down to a child's level & take life in from her perspective, in larger fractions & smaller steps. To ignore all life's pressing expectations for a while & focus on what is most important, the beauty that surrounds us, & life's gifts. To me, this is so important - but often forgotten in the daily boogie we get swept up in - it is such values that I want to teach my daughter to keep. And I can only thank her for bringing them back to my attention.
So in summary: In life's jive sometimes you move to the beat you are given, other times you must take the lead, but it is important that, once in a while, you let your partner lead, if you want to experience life at whole.
Today I leave you with the following video, this song is fitting, since it makes me & Scarlett both want to dance every time it plays. I love the message & the simplicity of it. So shake your booty boys & girls to Beauty in the World, by Macy Gray. Enjoy!
