It might have escaped your notice, but I'm really making an effort here.
Thinking of something to say every few days. Trying to be entertaining, clever, and thoughtful. (A near impossible combination.)
Hey, it's a challenge.
We spent the weekend in Utah, admiring the leaves and the mountains and the crisp, fall temperatures and the Cougars, of course.
We built a roaring fire in the hearth every night and I made serious work of watching Ethan lay on his belly in front of it.
On Saturday evening we climbed the steps of the stadium to cheer the boys onto victory and at one point David looked over at me and asked, "Could there be a prettier place for football?" No, there could not.
To add to our delight, the rain even fell on our sturdy log roof Sunday morning, making us snuggle farther under our covers and dream about staying forever, tucked into the mountain and hidden away. It was still misting around us when we finally rose to bacon and eggs, the fog and the pouring rain making our steaming mugs of cocoa seem both necessary and enchanting. The perfect pair of adjectives for anything. It also made me want to buy a teapot for heating water, you know, two days a year.
On our way into town, David pointed to one of his old apartments and said surprised, "That place is a dump. I thought it was so nice."
I pointed out that he had lived there twenty years ago. That's bound to have an effect.
He looked over at me and smiled, "Oh yeah."
Because we forget. We forget that we're old. That time has passed. That our kids are nearly ready to be here themselves. It feels just like it always did. Like we're just starting out. Like we're just getting the hang of it. And mostly just faking it until we grow up. Like we just started this life together.
I tell David all the time that when you live in the desert it's hard to notice the passage of time. It's an argument I've perfected. There are no seasons to mark the turn of the earth, the cycles of the year, the growing and waning, and you lose your place in the story of your life.
But it's more than that.
Because we are fundamentally eternal beings, I think it's hard to comprehend the astounding, ephemeral brevity of earth life. It is impossible to imagine that life won't continue like this forever, David and I in the front seat, driving our children up misty roads carved into hills as old as time. That my boy won't be stretched out in front the fire, colored in shades of red and orange and shadow, that the girls won't always be visiting on the back porch, heads tucked together while the golden coins from the aspens gather around their feet like gossipy little eavesdroppers, that I won't always be able to hear Caleb's violin singing and pining from the other room, accompanying the falling, dying leaves on their final flight.
But the evidence is mounting. The kids are growing. The years are elapsing. The campus is changing. The apartments are deteriorating. The grey on our heads is real and persistent. The miles on our car are accumulating.
Here among the timeless cliffs of the Rockies, I am a witness: Time is passing. Surely. Swiftly. The seasons are changing. And I would weep...
if the views along the way weren't so spectacular.
