New Year Musing: Part 1

Time is slipping by--slipping by, slipping by--and this is my safe haven, my capsule, my treasure box of memories, so I will list a few before they slip by--slip by, slip by--again.

Sparkly purple plastic hairbrushes--I can never quite figure out how to arrange the adjectives--"Understand" by Jeremy Camp ( I always thought it was "so why don't I get back up agin-again")--crawling under the black plastic on the living room floor during Christmas tree setup--Christian music listening on an early Sunday morning--a pile of dress-up clothes and a plastic wand--mud puddle playing--summer night pajamas and the red picnic table outside--shiny black snow boots--playing in the nursery--Christmas light magic--teeter-tottering in the yard--VHS tape marathons while on the red-and-black basement carpet--naps with the red blanket covering the window--bath-time on Sesame Street and of course the snuffleupagus' meatballs--sorting beads and Wild Kratts watching--homemade play-dough and springtime movies--hide-n-seek and catch with Dad--bedtime--moving the mattresses--stuffed animal kingdoms--baby doll pretend--apple trees and wooded wanderings and radio familiarities and history and friendship and interaction and love and magic and reading and creativity and memories and dusty, dusty snippets of past and everything, everything, church and Sunday school and sermon smilings and niggly rememberings and dreams and movies and projects and food experiments and childhood everything and all of it a time capsule, a present, all tied up and packed away, away in an old white apple box, tied with a bow, with a thousand bows, shoved back on a tall shelf, dusted and forgotten, misplaced, unused, going, going, gone.

Gone. Is it gone? Can not the shelf be reached and the bows untied? Can not the clock be rewound? Can not the batteries be replaced? Can not at least a shred of the past, at least a replica, at least a facade be produced? Can not at least a bit, a sparkle, a glimmer of it all be rediscovered? Or is it all gone?

Maybe the box belongs to the years it was built in. Maybe it must stay with them, never to be opened and never to return. Maybe it is lost and gone, maybe all the present time spent searching for it is in vain, only plundering more time for the future. Maybe all is a waste, all is fruitless, all is with no point.

Time creeps up anyway, besides, creeps up and steals and destroys and trashes the path for the future. All old is unsalvageable, all present is in vain, all future is uncertain.

No amount of champagne, no quantity of sparkling drink can drown this hopelessness. Time wasted, time dead. Another 365 uncertainties to worry about. To try to make better than all the ones before. But history repeats itself, and most is unsavory. Thus the next steps become shaky. blurry. doomed.

Another try-again haunted by all the other failed attempts.

But maybe this new time will be better and different.

As of yet it is unmarred. The hope of its potential is that it can remain that way... ♱✟✝