to increase speed

The most bizarre thing happened this weekend. I am still in shock because it's happened twice in one week at our house. That doesn't give you much time to recover. Even though we went through this last year, it still took me by surprise.

I thought we discussed this! No more growing up!

Daniel went and did it again… he had a birthday. My little curly-headed boy is no longer remotely the child I knew, but a serious young man, who seemed to take his 11th birthday in stride, with all the gravitas of someone who understands that they are embarking on the long journey of adulthood. He gravely informed me on the morning of his arrival anniversary that he had two birthday resolutions (I don't know where he got the idea that you make new year's resolutions on your birthday, but I like it.)

The first was to "insist that I not be called Boo Bear from now on."  Quite seriously stated, I have to agree with him on this one. Boo Bear is a nickname my giant boy has indeed outgrown, and I can't blame him for wanting to leave it behind. His father's penchant for giving anything and everyone nicknames will soon fill the void, and in the meantime, we could always call him by his given name, just for different.

The second birthday resolution, he said, was "to increase speed." Speed of what? He didn't elaborate, on his way out the door to another busy day of fifth grade and then the Lego League tourney this weekend. Sports times? Math facts? Lego-building? I wonder.

Does he want time to go faster?  Is that what he meant? Is he ready to speed into independence and adulthood? Well, no offense, my dearly beloved boy, but I hope you utterly fail at that resolution. Time already flies faster than light or sound, zipping past us at astonishing rates that cannot be measured by instruments known to mankind.

There's no pause button on life. And where would I pause you? That precious sliver of moment where the colic demon had finally departed and my body had recovered from your wretchedly hard birth and I began to enjoy motherhood with every fiber of my being? Would I hit the button and freeze you playing in the leaves that fall you were ineffably three, when the sunlight turned your golden curls into a halo so bright I blamed it for the tears in my eyes?

Maybe I would reach for the remote and stop time the day we played hide and seek and I couldn't find you. My heart in my throat, I searched the house and finally stood, panic-filled but silent in your doorway, and followed the sound of steady breathing to the clothes hamper, in which you curled fast asleep.

My little boy has disappeared once again. He's not hiding in the hamper this time, but wearing giant shoes and off to this and that as life picks up speed and the merry-go-round spins faster and faster. I see him every now and again, like this school-less morning when he popped in to show me his hot-off-the-press Star Trek Enterprise model, with his blankie tied around his shoulders like a cape over his pajamas. Every now and again I hear him giggle, echoes of my baby in the belly laugh of the boy.

No, sweet son of mine. Your mother, your biggest fan, your first and last and best cheerleader, does not support your resolution. In fact, I will actively work against it. There will be no increase of speed, not while I'm around to grab the fleeting moments and hang on until they are prised from my grasp and hurtle into memory at warp speed, outpacing your plastic starship.

There's no pause button on life, no. But there is a remote, forever stuck in fast-forward.