Full Tilt

I feel like summer's running away with me, like a semi-feral horse onto whose bare back I've climbed and whose mane I've just barely managed to wind in my fingers before kicking its flanks.

Maybe it's all of life that's galloping full tilt.

A few evenings ago we were sitting around the living room with my niece, who was visiting for a few days, when C brought in the mail. He handed me an envelope, which was a card from my mom, wishing us a happy anniversary.

"Our anniversary's tomorrow!" I exclaimed. "Did you remember that?"

"No," C said. "Did you."

"I think it's our fifteenth, too," I said. "Isn't that like the pewter or tupperware anniversary?"

"Has it really been fifteen?"

"Yeah, 'cause it was nineteen-ninety-nine," my niece chimed in. "That means it was fifteen years ago last time I was here?"

"Doesn't that make you feel old?" I asked.

A little while later, while I was brushing my teeth, it occurred to me, Oh yeah, this is two-thousand-twelve, not two-thousand-fourteen! 

"Good news," I said to C as I got into bed. "We've only been married thirteen years, not fifteen."

"I thought the math was off," he said.

"My math was fine, I just had the year wrong."

Now, while most people in Maine wish it was 2014 right now (except for the few who enjoy having a lunatic at the state's helm), I'm not in any rush to have a thirteen-year-old and two nine-year-olds. 

Life is speeding by fast, but it's not every day that you get back two whole years.