Time Flies

Time, elapsed time. It’s 1:47 in the afternoon, what time will it be in 35 minutes. It took you three-and-a-half hours to get home; what time was it when you left. If you do one task that takes 30 minutes and one task that takes 90 minutes, how much time do you need to complete both tasks. How long does it take to get from here to there. How much time do you need to get everything done.

Time. Flies.

I am in third grade. I think I’m about as brilliant as a third-grader could be. School never takes much effort, and I’m always reading. I know I don’t like math, but I’m okay. I’m sometimes nervous that other kids can do the timed math tests faster than I can, but I’m accurate, and don’t have to work. I know how to tell time, no problem. Miss Moody likes me. She wears pink and has short black, curly hair. A curvy figure in tight fuzzy cardigans and snug skirts. Sweet, milkwhite skin. She lives across the street from us, in the condos that were built last summer. I sold her Girl Scout cookies. She got two boxes of the caramel ones with the coconut.

I love writing vocabulary words in sentences, making them as long and descriptive as possible. She likes this.

But the standardized test for third grade doesn’t have essay questions.

When the results of the spring standardized tests come back, I fully expect to see high marks, as usual. They weren’t hard, they never are.

Instead, next to the 97 and 98% scores for each skill, there was a big 64% under “elapsed time”. And a 76% for “basic computation”.

64%? How can that be? 76%? Computation? What kind of moron am I? Who am I, if not the whiz in the class?

In the report, in Miss Moody’s perfect script, were the words, “Meera needs extra work on figuring elapsed time. Her speed at figuring multiplication tables could use some work, as well. Please take some time at home working on these skills.”

I read and re-read them. Who am I, if not the one my parents were proud of? Who am I, who never needs extra help in anything? My parents have enough to worry about, do they really need this on top of everything? Do I?

The cold pit spreads through my shoulders, the sweaty palms, the rising meniscus of tears. Can’t speak. Emotion. Blink. Blink. Blink. Look at the fluorescent lights.

The bell rings, and I don’t go home. Home is a quick walk through some woods along a path lined with honeysuckle vines. Instead, I go to the playground. I head for the swings.

Most recesses, I swing. Give myself over to gravity, and defy it.

I wrap my sweaty hands around the chain, and kick off. Pump. Back. Pump. Back. Time. Back. Pump. Back. 1. 2. Time. Back. Pump. Watch the shadows of me swinging. Pump. Back. Pump. Lean waaaay back so my feet are vertical. Back. Pump high. Feel the power in my kicks, the tummy lurch as I drop, the centrifuge catch, and swing back. The shadows are longer. Pump. Back. Time.

The sun is in my eyes now, so they can run freely, but I don’t let them. Pump. Back. Time. No one is in the playground now. I’m alone. Pump. Back.

My hands smell metallic. The shadows of the trees along the playground stretch to my feet. My mother appears at the path, looking worried.

What, oh what will I say.

Time. Flies.

The Next Generation

I am officially part of the next generation. I remember the first time this kind of realization happened---I was seven years old, the youngest in my generation, and my younger sister was born. I was no longer the baby.

I was in this place for a long time---the second-oldest of the youngest generation. My older sister Shelley and I were almost like the almost-aunts of our generation. My younger brother and sister and cousins were all much younger than us. But still, we were at the bottom of the totem pole, generation-wise.

The next time it happened was when Shelley had her son, more than ten years ago. My nephew began the next family level. In some ways, it was almost as shocking, generation-wise, as becoming a mother, myself, three years later. Shelley and I are truly aunties. We are the Aunt Janets and Aunt Julies and Aunt Janes of our generation. But I have gotten used to this position. We're young mothers, we have our kids, the cousins play, and things are good.

This weekend, however, I realize that I am graduating to the next generation. My niece---Nicholas' brother's daughter---is pregnant with twins. She's young, just 20. (She was a flower girl at our wedding!) I will be a great-aunt before the summer is over.

Rhiannon's baby shower was this weekend. The gathering was an interesting cross-section of grandmothers and great- (soon to be great-great!) aunts, and young girls, Rhiannon's friends. One of her friends brought her six-month-old son. And I so wanted to identify with the younger generation. It's how I see myself, after all. I'm not in the generation of children who had children who are having children. I'm in the generation having children now! I have a four-year-old and a seven-year-old, don't I?

But now. Rhiannon introduced me to her friends as her aunt, and I tried to chat with those girls (listen to me---"those girls"?! It's not just them recognizing the generational change) about parenthood and Harry Potter versus Star Wars and good vacations for kids. And I realized that I'm the aunt. Not the cousin.

Time, she passes.

I watched Rhiannon opening the baby gifts, and held and coddled the six-month-old, and came to accept that I am all right with not having any more babies, even though I love them and can't keep my hands off them. I watched Rhiannon's belly move with her two babies, and was reminded strongly of what it felt like to have a slippery baby slide his foot over and kick my liver. She held up some of the baby onesies on her belly, and I remember doing the exact same thing, trying to imagine that baby in there. I won't do that again, and I am okay with that.

But graduating to the third generation from the bottom? Weird.

I guess that's what I get for marrying a man 15 years my senior. Still, it's quite a pill to swallow.