Year Three

    YEAR THREE..... A moment, a season, a year, a life....without stopping to breathe or blink, without a sound or a touch, it goes by, that phantom called time, that invisible ticking of our lifespan, and it latches onto our souls and whisks us through life and we are left looking back and looking forward and wondering "when?" and "how?" and "why?" and sometimes even "if?"   It is too fast, that short stretch of time we are given, and from our first mewling breath until our last dying gasp, whether we have been blessed with many years or few, they all pass in a fleeting and fading moment, a reality that will one day be no more, and our season will be done.
     I have crossed the midpoint of life: the marker where you have lived longer than the years you have left, and the years you have left are guaranteed to pass more quickly than your first five decades; and it forces one to ponder and re-evaluate and assess the journey thus far.
      It is humbling to stand at this point, looking back, looking forward, knowing, and wondering, and wishing for a replay button,or perhaps, a second chance. There are paths that have been taken, and wrongly so. There are byways that have been missed, and sadly so.  Yet there have been treks that led to wondrous and marvelous discoveries-- good roads, fruitful roads, bountiful roads.  The monumental task has been to keep moving forward, to not stand still, to never become idle, to search for the productive path, to reach a destiny.
    It is ironic to be standing at  the midpoint in my life while simultaneously standing  at the midpoint of my daughter's college career.  I am half-way done with life. She is half-way done with college. I have made my choices. Hers are free to be made.  Bittersweet, looking at life from such a perspective, knowing I have chosen my journey, knowing I will not travel with her to the end of all hers. She will one day forge ahead on her own, blazing trails of her own, and rightly so; but for now, college is a journey we have endured together. The irony rests in the fact that because of each other, and in spite of each other, we have both grown.
      It is a journey that seemed daunting and impossible and overwhelming a mere two years ago, that humid August morning when we packed our car with overstuffed bags, boxes of books, piles of shoes, an extra walker, a spare wheelchair, a very nervous poodle. We filled the tank with gas and silently drove three states south, curious about college and nervous about classes. But now, at this point, from this perspective, it seems to have passed too quickly. Two years, a split second on the wings of time, and we have come so far, so fast.
     Year three....how did it happen so quickly that we are at year three, at this mid-point in the journey? Just when we have gotten used to the routine, used to the schedule, used to running up and down the interstate between Virginia and South Carolina, used to the pattern we now know so well? Just gotten used to it all, and then, only then,  to realize we are half-way to the finish line, and this voyage will end?
     But for now, we travel together, and the journey is good.