Years ago, when my husband and I were first getting to know one another, he said to me, “Awara, if you had been Moses, you would have arrived in the Promised Land in 40 days instead of 40 years after the Exodus, and God would have greeted you by saying, ‘Hi, Awara. Good to see you.’ Then, looking over your shoulder He would have asked, ‘Where’s everybody else?’”
When I was serving as a church choir and orchestra director, I pared down the Christmas portion of Handel’s “Messiah” to 32 minutes in order to fit it into the Sunday morning worship service, which meant I had to really speed up those tempos and cut out all of repeats. All of them. But, seriously, weren’t you listening the first time?
Now this quick time girl is going to be a grandmother and I am thinking about time. Not like a scientist thinks, not like my brilliant engineer of a brother thinks, but more like a Whovian remembering the words of their Time Lord, “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect. But, actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey . . . stuff.”
Well then, what makes time wobble?
Rebecca K. Reynolds says, “Lately I’ve had to hold papers far back to see them. My close vision is leaving me, even though the doctor told me my eyes were young for my age. I’m going to have to get readers, which will slow things down, like sciatica slows things down, like looking back on life slows things down.” And, I could relate immediately because for three years now I have had plantar fasciitis and this really slows me down. Everything takes longer. I have reduced grocery shopping, washing clothes, and making dinner to cost versus benefit equations where cost is measured in degrees of foot pain. Every step must be weighed in the balance. Pain slows time.
So does gratitude. Ann Voskamp teaches that thankfulness, which requires being fully present in the moment, has the effect of slowing time.
Children also offer the gift of Slow Time. I admit I have been reluctant to accept this gift because the extra piles of laundry and stacks of dirty dishes that appear when children do kept me spinning, and I suspect somewhere there is an entire roomful of boxes of slow time that I left unopened during the years of raising my children. I think this is true because there was one box, one day, that I did open.
I still remember it, the day before my second daughter, Amanda, was born. Sensing she was coming soon, I decided to devote myself fully to my firstborn, Kathryn, that afternoon. She and I walked around the block in our neighborhood, a walk we had taken many times before, but this time I stopped, without complaint or urging, every time (Every. Time.) Kathryn paused to study a rock or to laugh at a small flower hiding in the cracked curb cement.
Next, we went to our “Pooh Bridge” to play “Poohsticks.” Actually, our bridge was just a few planks of wood arranged over a dribble of a creek. Standing on one side of the bridge we would let small sticks drop from our hands and then simply turn around to watch them float out under the other side of the bridge.
Last, and best of all, because Kathryn could never get enough of this, I helped her climb into her backyard swing, and I pushed her over and over again (“Again, Mommy!”) into the rising moon of a cold February Thursday. Out of more than two decades of parenting days, I remember that one day. Such is the gift of Slow Time.
I’ve heard grandparents are somehow able to receive this gift of Slow Time. They don’t say, “Hurry up!” And grandparents would never hack out Handel’s repeats. They relish repeats (“Again, Grandmommy!”). Perhaps the silver in their hair is simply what we can see of the fairy dust that has transformed them into Slow Time people. Perhaps it is, as Rebecca says, that “looking back slows things down,” and grandparents have more to look back on than parents do. Perspective slows time. Perhaps grandparents are also looking forward more keenly to the Eternal as it hovers increasingly nearer to them.
If little girls are made up of “sugar and spice and everything nice,” while little boys are made up of “snakes and snails and puppy dog tails,” then maybe grandparents are a mix of pain and gratitude and children and perspective all stirred up together in a recipe for Slow Time. Grandparents just may be another class of Time Lord who remember their stretched past, relish their slow present, and regard their shimmering future as they enjoy an unhurried walk Home.
“O Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12
Originally published by Kosmeo Magazine
by Shelbie Farmer 
by Candice Mrazik 
