Earlier today, I asked Kaiya when was the last time she saw her cousin Liam.
Mulling it over for a good ten seconds, she proudly said “Friday”.
I said “But today is Friday, sweetie.”
“Oh.”
We walked a few more steps up Kelker towards the Purple Park and I quizzed her, “Do you know what time it is?”
She thought for a moment longer than her last question and said “I don’t know, Daddy. What time IS it?”
The first question I asked was genuine…I really wanted to know the last time she got to play with her cousin. But her answer was what made me ask the next question rhetorically.
See, I’ve been thinking a lot lately, moreso when we’re together, about when in time do we lose our innocence? When is it that we realize that the world just ain’t as pretty of a place as we once thought it was?
At what point do we realize that our days are numbered and each step along the way can seem like just another strategic meeting? That we need to be somewhere but just can’t quite get there? That, no matter how much we prepare, there’s just never enough time.
The question has baffled me for years. Since the day she was born, really. At what point in our journey through life do things get serious?
And the conclusion that I came to today was that our innocence is buried the day we learn to “tell time”.
Thinking about it more as we sat on the park bench and blew bubbles, I realized that although Kaiya and I can converse in a flowing, intelligent and polite manner–where every word that she hears is a new file in her little memory bank; she has no concept of time.
“Ticking away, the moments that make up a dull day”
It must start in elementary school. That first lesson about the big hand on the twelve and the little hand on the four. Soon after that, we’re fucked.
Before we know it, it’s “twelve forty five: recess time” and “three ten in the afternoon: school lets out” followed by “dinner at seven” and finally to “bed at nine”.
Things get regimented.
“I’ve got a meeting at one thirty and a dentist appointment at five”
“Work begins at eight am and ends at four thirty. Not a minute later”
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say
