I Find Comfort in the Slowness

Time is a strange concept. I have struggled with its passage for most of my life. 

I remember as a young kid, not more than five or six years old, being slightly annoyed by how slowly time crawled. Dad could never get home from work soon enough. Only how many more minutes until Sesame Street came on? And summers. Good Lord. They were endless. I remember soaking in the sun on the back stoop of the house we grew up on down on Wortman in Claremore, just waiting. For what, I can never remember. Maybe for my sister to get home from visiting her friends. Maybe I was waiting for the mail to arrive, and maybe there would be a new Lego catalog. Maybe I was waiting for the newspaper, so I could check the baseball box scores. Maybe I was waiting for my cousin to come visit. I'd just sit there by the sandbox, and let the sun beat down. I'd feel it soak into the back of my neck. I'd feel the warmth of the sun through the bottom of my feet as I rested them on the concrete stoop. Just waiting...and basking in the sun.

Somewhere along the way, time began to betray me. I don't remember when. Yesterday? Two months ago? Two decades ago? I don't know. Time is funny out here on the frontier. But, I look up, and too much time has passed. The sun has risen and set more times than I care to count. It makes me uneasy.

At least it is something I notice. In the evenings, I take comfort in the slowness. I sit, and I let time creep by, much in the same ways I once did when I was young. I sit, and I pretend that the mailman is coming with a Lego catalog. I pretend that I am waiting on the newspaper to see how the Indians did yesterday. I sit, and I soak up the sun. I watch it paint a masterpiece across the sky. The sun leaves me each evening as it sets in the west. But, I know it will be back again. It will rise in the morning, and bring a sunrise that is more beautiful than I might think possible. It always has. I find comfort in that.

I find comfort in the slowness.