A Short Short Story

A trick of the light. A strong gust of wind through the branches and he's there.

The wind settles and he's gone again. 

Was he even there in the first place? 

A trick of the light. Or maybe much more. A glimpse of the truth behind the veil. A brief and fleeting moment of utter reality, wherein he has no where to hide. 

Wherein you realize—you should be the one hiding. 

But where did he go? 

Gone again with a gust of the wind. 

Perhaps just a trick of the light.

End of a Quarter

This is it, folks. Tonight is the last night I'm 25. Ok, ok. On the surface, that's not a big deal. But look, if—IF—I live to be 100, I'm already a quarter of the way there.

That's so surreal to think about.

I know when you're young, birthdays can't come quick enough. And time seems to lurch forward at a snail's pace, lingering at all those stages you don't like. Right before you're 13, when you're so sick of being a "tween". Again at 14, 15, when all you want to be doing is driving. 17 when you wish you were 18 and a legal adult. 20 when you want to be 21 and REALLY a legal adult.

But speaking from experience, after 21, I really want to hit the brakes. Or maybe just encourage time to go back to that snail lurch again. Because soon you're in your mid-twenties, staring anxiously at your mid-thirties , and forced to reevaluate where you are and what you're doing and who you're doing it with.

And it's not that there's no excitement left. I get really excited thinking about what the future holds. Where I'll be when my next birthday rolls around. Even though I'll be one step closer to thirty.

But you know how your parents tell you, or told you—or both—all those times in between then and now that one day you'd wish things would slow down? That although it seemed impossible at the time—because everything you wanted in life hinged on the earth making one more full rotation, everything depended completely on reaching that next milestone and adding another tally to your "years alive" scoreboard—that yes, even still, you'd reach a point where you'd want to go back. Even just a little. Even just one day. Because the lurch has morphed into something more like a sprint and the finish line is maybe just that much closer than you'd like.

Well, they're right.

And on the cusp of 26, I'm feeling that truth, and looking back on my 25 years and wondering at how all of that time, which seemed like so much as it happened, feels like so little now that it's passed.

But anyway. This is it. I'm standing in 25 and looking at 26 and clearly I'm a cluster of conflicting emotions like reluctance and anxiety and expectation and hope. And by tomorrow I'll be 26 and looking back. And forward. And trying to figure out how to do both of those things at the same time.

Wish me luck.