It feels as though my life has been subjected to a fierce acceleration the last few years. I can't say that I wasn't warned. My mother told me over and again that the baby years are fleeting, and that the school years are a blur, and that middle age swallows you before you even saw it on the horizon and...and, and and and and.

I didn't listen, of course. Because this wisdom always seemed to come at a time that I was struggling to reach five o'clock on Friday, or the other side of a tough exam, or summer vacation, or waiting for my due date to arrive. Time grinded by. After the birth of my children, though, time began to warp. Those early days were measured in milestones. First time I nursed without pain. First time the kids slept through the night. First time I was body slammed by mother-guilt. Each instance seemed to take forever to arrive, or to happen while I was busy blinking. I lost all sense of expectations. One day could fly by, and the next could last 95 hours. I threw out my arms and learned to back-float through the weeks, expending minimal energy and letting the current pull me where I needed to be.

Even though I often felt aimless, those years passed in a blink. And I can't even believe I'm saying that, because I still remember those sleepless nights that made me wonder if the shockwave from my crying baby would send the earth off its axis and cause the sun to never rise again. I remember the way the clock seemed to stop moving every afternoon before my husband was due home from work. Okay, it still does that.

Now that the rhythm of our lives is dictated by the school calendar, I wake up suprised that another Friday has arrived, seemingly without a lull since the last. I'm having trouble slowing down and appreciating the little moments. I feel as though I've been shot out of a cannon, and we race through our week with backpacks flying, permission slips floating in the swirling air currents around us.

I long for unstructured time. And yet, when I'm granted an aimless day with the kids, we make each other crazy.

I don't know what I want.

I don't even know what I'm trying to say here. Maybe I'm just trying to say thanks to my mom for telling me that she felt this, too. That these years are hard, but they fly by. That there is joy to be had, if you can snatch at it while you zoom by.

I want wings made of netting, so that I can spread them out and capture the joy as I fly through. I don't want to miss a thing.