I think it is finally beginning to set in. My buddy Rick swears up and down that he is going to retire come December. One of our mutual friends is retiring next Thursday.
“Where did the time go?” he asked rhetorically the other day. I certainly don’t know. But things seem to be speeding along with or ,generally speaking, without our consent.
Take my immediate circle by way of example. I’ve know stepson Joe since he was in the 9th grade if memory serves. He’s now a proud diplomate of Hendrix College and working as an analyst for a bank. He’s still living upstairs as I type this but he’s looking at apartments and most likely will leave us old folks sooner than later. Which is the way it should be.
I have been texting with nephew Clarke who is over in Germany for a truncated summer abroad. He would have left in June but for the “recent unpleasantness” in Eastern Europe. But he’s there now and from the pictures he is sending home he seems to be having a big time, drinking bottled water from the Alps and visiting dungeons in the Netherlands.
But the most astounding thing I’ve seen out of him is a video of him conducting a virtual tour of Mississippi State where he is enrolled.
In Russian.
I had managed to forget Russian is his Minor over there. I have watched it 2-3 times. To my admittedly untrained ear his pronunciation sounds spot on. It seems like last Friday I was teaching history and he was across the hall in Latin class. And there he is pointing out the “stadia” where “Americanski football” is played. I kept listening closely but never heard words or phrases you might also associate with Mississippi State. Words like “beerski” or “rednecksumbitchski” uttered. Or “cheatlikehellski.” I’ll have to listen again. Maybe I missed it.
His step-cousin Sarah, Joe’s sister, is an Arabic speaker. As I was telling a language teacher buddy of mine the other night, I can kinda fake my way through Latin, French and Cajun-French. I couldn’t begin to decipher Russian and Arabic. Sarah and Clarke are way smarter than me.
But the biggest news, one that I never saw coming, is that my nephew Eli and his wife Sunny, along with their two little girls, have bought a house about a good quarter mile from here. I guess I’ve know Eli since he was 5 or so. I didn’t figure that they were going to stay in Oxford forever. But I didn’t think they would move to a Little Rock much less Hillcrest. Maybe that was the plan all along and nobody told me. That’s OK. I’m used to it.
So I’ve been helping them on this end before the big migration next Thursday. I let the plumber in last week. And Monday my yard man is sending a crew over to cut the lawn. Odds are that they will have a box of wine waiting on them too.
The girls are something like 5 and 2. Their grandfather Bob says he has told the proud parents that I am willing to act as an au pair. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Deacon has allowed as how it will be “fun” to have little girls around the house. I find the prospect totally alarming. Not that I have anything against little girls. I don’t much want little boys around either.
As you can see, I am an equal opportunity curmudgeon. I do not discriminate on the basis of sex.
Not that anybody much cares about that either.
But that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve known these young people for what seems like 15 minutes in the fullness of time. And look at them now.
Look at us all now.
Where did the time go indeed?
