Yesterday the night came early. Everyone inside, cheeks brushed red from play.
Late June. Time is passing.
This new year already mid-way through.
I know the house now. It’s pleasures, and idiocyncracies. I know how to walk in the night hours to avoid the weak floorboards. How the light looks at dawn, as it filters through the stain glass windows of the doorway. At dusk. How the breeze feels through the window, and the warmth of the gas heater at my back. Stranger-neighbours are now friends. Exams turn to holidays. One semester passes and another awaits.
They cut a tree down to size outside our window. Pruning for growth.
You can see it most clearly in them. This mystery of passing time. These three small people that dominate my days. Kids are like calenders. They bear the marks of the change.
Three years in adult time, is nothing, in child-formation time: everything.
Already the baby is fading from their faces, our eldest two. She nearly four. Can’t wait to be four. Call me four now, please. He just turned the corner of his second year. His speech in sentences now. She barely mispronounces a word.
And Baby J: three months today. Already nearly outgrowing his bassinet. Comparing photos from just eleven weeks ago: when we brought him home. Already twice the size. And smiling. Smiling all the time. And with a baby peace about him.
And another new life waits to be born in the apartment upstairs.
