Anticipating "Soon"

Do you remember being a kid at Christmas?  Do you remember how you would go to bed as early as possible in the hopes that sleeping would make the morning come faster, only to find that you couldn't sleep, no matter how hard you tried?  I remember being so excited to see what Santa (and my Mom and Dad) had brought me that there were no visions of sugar plums dancing in my head on Christmas Eve! 

There aren't very many things that get me that excited anymore.  Even Christmas, which I still get childishly giddy over, has lost some of its sparkle in the years of growing up and my changing family.  

I started thinking about "waiting time" today, and how immeasurably long the hours of Christmas Eve night felt to me as a child.  I was working with a client today who kept asking for her mom to come home.  I kept saying "She'll be home soon," which meant "in a couple of hours".  But to this (very impatient) child, two hours was not "soon".  And this realization brought to mind some of my favorite memories from when I was a kid.  

Two of my favorite times of the year came during the summer and around Christmas when the Ruppel family would pass through from Texas on their way to visit family in Illinois.  The Ruppels were, and still are, my very favorite people on earth.  They are my oldest friends, and I can always count on outrageously fun times being had and great memories being made when our families get together. So as their visits drew closer we would count down the days, anxiously awaiting their arrival.  Then the great day would finally come and it would be spent cleaning the house, making the beds with new sheets and blowing up air mattresses.  (Side Note - John and Joanie are the only people on earth I would happily have given up my bed for.  I hate sleeping on air mattresses or the floor, but if it meant having the Ruppel family in my house, I would have slept on a bed of nails!) The day was spent vacuuming, dusting, washing dishes and cleaning the bathrooms.  But there would invariably come a time in the day when I would ask - "Mom, how much longer?" I just thought I would burst with the waiting!  And she would say - "They'll be here soon." Soon to her was, of course, in a few hours.  That was NOT soon to me!  I think back on it now and realize that my mom must have been frantic to make sure everything was done and perfect for her dear friends' arrival, and a few hours was "soon" to her.  But to me, waiting all day (and sick of cleaning) it just wasn't soon enough.  The thing is though, they always arrived eventually, and then the next day or two was spent soaking up as much of their presence as possible, and it was always over too soon.  That last day would come, and we'd be wishing time would slow down so that the visit didn't have to end.  Its funny how that works. 

I have never been a patient person, and probably never will be, but my idea of when "soon" is has definitely changed as I've gotten older.  I still look forward to visiting the Ruppels every fall (hurry up October!!) and definitely count down the days to Christmas, but it is different.  Now I find myself wishing more often that time would slow down, not speed up.  I'm getting older, and so are the people around me, and I wish that I could slow down time and get a few more things done before 30 gets here, or spend a few more hours with my grandparents and parents and aunts and uncles and cousins before they are taken from me, or we grow up and grow apart.  I wish that Zoe, Gabriel and Cameron, Molly and Leah, and Carter would stop growing up so fast.  All of this wishing that time would slow down leads me to realize that what I really need to do is take advantage of the time I DO have.  Be thankful that today I can call any one of my grandparents, my dad, my aunts, uncles, or cousins and tell them that I love them.  Be thankful for the things I have accomplished before I turn 30, and be thankful that turning 30 is not the end of the world. (Although I'll be honest, some days it feels like it might be...) And I will continue to be thankful that my friends share their babies with me, and let me be the best Aunt Kiki I know how to be.  

So... all that is to say this - Although my idea of "soon" has definitely changed as I get older, and my timeline is now measured in months and years instead of hours and days, there is still so much that I look forward to.  And that, I've decided, is what makes life worth living.