Rising up, falling down

June is here, the end of the school year, the beginning of the summer. For people with school-age kids (of which I am one), the end of the year is always bitter-sweet. While I don't agree that people with kids experience a deeper or more significant type of love that is unknown to those without kids, I do think kids give you a unique and dramatic perspective on time. Nine months for an adult is nothing. From September to June for most of us it's same-old-same-old: same job, same basic routine, unless there's a major life event, you just don't change much (unless you're gestating a baby, but then, you're learning to be a parent right there). For kids, however, nine months can foment tremendous growth and change. The hobbies they have, the music they listen to, the clothes they wear, what they think and say, kids can undergo a sea change in personality in the course of a school year. And it makes you, the parent, dramatically aware of how rapidly time is passing, how your children are barrelling toward adulthood, how fleeting the world is. In some ways, it's great, because change is the nature of the world, all things change, gowth is to be marveled at. And in some ways, it's sad, because change demands we mourn what was while simultaneously celebrating what is to be. It's like the Laurie Anderson song "Walking and Falling." We really are always rising up and falling down in perfect sequence. The best we can do is acknowledge it, embrace it, and do our best to exist within this happy-sad, gaining-loosing space where the moment we're in lasts forever and the year clicks by in the bink of an eye.