Greased Watermelons, Hot Potatoes, and the Ticking Clock

Sunday was my birthday. I spent this past weekend camping at a beautiful place with beautiful people. I guess the whole weekend was a birthday party, not just for me, but for several others who were there and whose birthdays were close together. I’m glad there was Friday and Saturday, cause Sunday was spent packing up and driving home. But that’s ok. It was a great weekend. It was time well spent.

My daughter is going to an all-girls summer camp this week. It will be the first time she has spent this much time away from either of her parents. A full week of meeting new friends and making memories to treasure. After we had arrived home and cleaned up from camping, I had to take her to her aunt’s house not too far away from my house. Since her daughter is going too, she took my daughter on Sunday and dropped them off on Monday morning. As the time came for me to leave with my son and come back home Sunday night, I started thinking about how big my girl is getting. She was so excited about staying at a camp, sleeping there like a giant sleepover at a friend’s house with more girls to play with than she could imagine. I was excited for her too, but overwhelmed with the prospect that she was not going to be with either myself or her mother. I told her I loved her and for her to have a good time this week. I gave her hugs and kisses and told her goodbye. I put my son in his car seat and came around to my side of the bus to get in…and it hit me. Tears started welling up in my eyes and my body began to hitch. I couldn’t stop it. I had to go see her once more and tell her the things I had just told her all over again. She saw my wet face (even though I had wiped away the tears only minutes before) and asked why I was crying. I just looked at her and told her they were happy tears and that my little girl was now a big girl. That was mostly true, but I think part of it was that I just knew that her childlike innocence was slipping away and I couldn’t help her hold on to it, no matter what I did…

I remember going to camp as a child. I remember spending an entire week away from family. The first time was the worst. I had never experienced being away from my grandma for that length of time before, and the homesickness hit me hard. But as time went by, and I realized just how fun the place was, and how many new friends I was making, the desire to be home again faded and was replaced by a longing to stay longer than just the appointed week. I remember the spring fed swimming hole with a dock and the water slide that made you almost fly before gravity took you to the water’s surface. There were holes big enough that we could swim through and for just a moment, feel like we were swimming through long tunnels, even though it was no more than six feet or less. In that spring, we also played a game. The counselors had thrown in a dozen or so watermelons. The object of the game was to jump in, grab a watermelon, and try to make it back to the dock without someone stealing it from you. But what made the game harder was this: the watermelons were lathered with Crisco. No sooner did you think you were home free with the prized watermelon that it would either slip out of your hands all by itself, or someone would just swim up and push it out of your hands. It took all you could to just hold on to it without losing it.

Remember the game of Hot Potato? You would stand in a circle of others and pass a ball around the circle and try to pass it off to the next person before the music stopped (ala Musical Chairs) and you were left holding the “Hot Potato”. You didn’t want to be left holding it because then you were out of the game. Now for real…hot potatoes are hot. This past weekend we made baked potatoes in the campfire. I really think that if you do it just right, there is no finer way to bake a potato than in a campfire. But you have to get them out of the red-hot coals. Sure, you can use tongs, if you have them. We had some, but they were plastic and really flimsy, so the potatoes had to be taken out by hand. Talk about hot…the true game of Hot Potato was on. Just grab one and get it out of your hand as fast as possible. This wasn’t just a game. You could get burned.

I’ve had my share of greased watermelons and hot potatoes. A lot of things that I really wanted to hold onto have slipped out of my hands, either because I couldn’t hold on to them tight enough, or outside forces pushed them out of my hands. And like a hot potato, some things I wanted so badly that I took them into my own hands and ended up getting singed. There had to be a reason why I couldn’t hold on to them. I truly believe that if I was meant to keep them, then I would still have them. They slipped out and became a part of me that each and every one of us share, something that the rich share with the poor, the evil share with the good, and no matter what you do to retain as much as you can, it slips away from us all…and that is the passage of time. I was watching an episode of Curious George with my son this morning. In it, George was tired of having to go to bed while it was still light outside. The Man in the Yellow Hat had shown him how to set a clock and George thought that if he set the hands back an hour, he would be able to play until dark and The Man could continue reading his book longer. Every day, he would set the clock back an hour without The Man realizing it. This resulted in The Man being several hours late for an appointment with the owner of a blimp that George wanted to ride in. George almost lost out on something he wanted because of trying to gain more time.

You can’t just create time. The mere movement of the hour hand backwards on a clock doesn’t do anything to stop actual time. As The Man in the Yellow Hat told George, “Our clock has to show the same time as everyone else’s clocks”. So true. That’s why you must try to retain the memories you make today, in real time, because what you have now may slip out of your grasp, just like the minutes and seconds of our lives. They slip away and you ain’t ever getting them back. Hold on to those you love. Make every moment count. One day your child is learning to walk and the next day they are running full speed away from you. Make the best of holding on to them and the memories made while watching time become a part of your past. You can’t stop it, but you sure can make sure that your allotted time on this planet is filled with making the best of it and filling it with happy memories.

I saw a sign on the end of a pier in North Redington Beach, FL that read, “God does not take away from Man’s allotted time on earth, the time spent fishing”. I like to think that you can replace “fishing” with “loving” and the meaning would not change. Show your love every day and maybe you can actually hold on tight to things and moments in your life that can just as easily slip from your grasp. And even though time won’t stop, it sure will seem like it.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long
and there is time to kill today

And then one day you find
ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run,
you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run
to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
thought I'd something more to say

BREATHE REPRISE
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire

Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

“Time” by Pink Floyd