booandbunny

I can’t feel it running through my fingers, but I know it’s there. Sometimes a twinge, sometimes a tickle, but otherwise I don’t notice its motion.

The touch hasn’t changed, though there are more hands on me now. Your hands, our children’s hands … They reach out to show love, to receive love, to grow love, to believe love. And between these touches it has been running through my fingers and I haven’t noticed.

Those eyes haven’t changed, though there are more of them now. Our children are such a blend of the two of us. While two have eyes that favor mine in color, all four of you have eyes that disappear when you laugh, swallowed by the apples of your cheeks as they somehow kiss your eyebrows. And under the laughter there has been a rustle of movement that I haven’t noticed.

I still feel like that 18-year-old you met, like that 22-year-old you married. There has never been a time when you haven’t made me feel beautiful and, to be honest, I’m generally surprised when I look in the mirror each morning. Who is that middle-aged mother?

I see them growing up, and so I know it moves. I hear them growing wiser, and so I know it passes. It tickles my fingers as it passes over, but otherwise I don’t notice its motion.

It’s been moving all around me, over the outside of me … furrowing my skin and graying my hair … but it hasn’t touched me inside.

Inside of me time has stopped and we are still and will always be those college kids in love. Hair or no hair. Wrinkles or no wrinkles. Parents of young children or empty nesters. Extra pounds or frail with illness. The stages of life can’t touch us because inside us time has stopped. Burdened with the weight of this amazing love time is too feeble to trudge forward. In its pause we’ll grow old together without realizing. Even as we tally each October 17th as it passes, it will feel as though time hasn’t passed. 14 … 15 … 50 … forever … Happy Anniversary.

// posted by HoBess @ 10/17/2006 11:04:00 AM