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Looks like the weather held
for them.
They’ve made the choices,
asked the questions. Short dress or
gown, bow tie or Double-Windsor knot. Picked
the earrings and the shoes, picked a date and some got the right answer. Some got turned down or never got the courage
to ask. But the weather held.
Long enough for that synthetic
click to capture a moment that will find its way into yearbooks and scrapbooks
and facebooks. Long enough for the arms
to link and the fingers to interlace, for the pins to bisect the stems and the
petals to grip the wrists. Long enough
for the flash of teeth and the soft fold of dimples. Long enough for pictures and convertibles
that will ruin the hair that required most of the afternoon.
So while the high school kids
take their parents cars and a rented concoction of pressed black and white
cotton, I’m feeling older and older.
When it’s my brother’s turn and then the girl next door’s turn and then
maybe my sister’s daughter’s turn, that’s when I’ll feel it. And I think it’s funny, how we never really
notice time until it changes the landmarks around us. We don’t notice it in ourselves or in those
closest to us, but we see it when the old mall’s got new stores and when that
old park becomes a housing development.
And then we say things like “Man, when did you get so tall?” or “Man, that tree didn’t used to fill the
backyard!” and “So you’re what, a
sophomore in High Sch- Oh, College? Grad School? Really?”
Act surprised like there aren’t any gray hairs and there aren’t any lines
in the mirror. Like the world hasn’t
changed us, like it only turns for everyone else. Act surprised like we somehow expected
everything to stay the same.
It’s one thing to hang onto
what we have and hope that everything stays exactly the same. Some people do that. Some spend their entire lives fighting the
hardhearted march of time and change.
But I just sit back, watch the kids in their fancy cars and Sunday-best,
and hope that time makes me into someone you’d be happy with.
It’s a surrender, but it’s
what I’ve got.
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