Time

Today's will just have to be short.  I have about an hour of time to myself today because DS never took a nap.  J, at my rather not-too-subtle-request, has taken the kids out for ice cream.  It's been a busy day, with not enough time to do all the things I wanted to do.  As it is, I still need to stretch and exercise, pack for our trip to the Lake, do two loads of laundry and clean the kitchen.  (I always have to clean the kitchen.  It is never clean.  Ever.)

My neighbor is from Gambia.  He said today that in his country, it is normal to spend a day sitting beneath a mango tree, relaxing.  When you get hungry, someone goes up, cuts down a mango, you wash it off, slice it up, and everybody eats.  Time is slow in Gambia, he says.  Everyone owns their own home and doesn't need to work and work to pay for it.  He misses that.  Time is slow.

In the summertime, I have two full months off, and some extra weeks besides.  I had to print up a special calendar for myself so I could write out everything on it that we had to do. Events.  Things-to-do.  Lists to complete.  The first thing on the list is to make a huge list of all the things I want to accomplish in this precious "free" time.

If I were to spend a day beneath a fruit tree with my friends, relaxing, eating, talking, doing whatever it is you do when time is slow, I would feel as though I had wasted a day.  It is so foreign to even think about a life not lived striving to make more money, do more things, put your kids through college so that they can join the life of working, doing, earning, saving, spending, running, running, running so fast that time is never slow.  Time is a thing with diamond wings, flying so fast, so precious that we shouldn't waste a moment.

Time is a thing with diamond wings...

How sweet would be to slow it for awhile.  Hold it in our hands and enjoy it.  Taste it like the flesh of a ripe mango, just picked from the tree.