Is there time enough to learn how to twist wires into a shape of myself?

A Facebook friend asked via post, “How do I slow down time?”

By capturing sunlight on your face and noticing it.

OK, really, I can’t slowdown time. This week, I read a few lines in a novel by Julia Keller that talked about how the way down the mountain is always faster on the way up, like how the second half of life speeds up. As our kids grow up, we bemoan this speeding up. I posted that I don’t know how to slow down time, all I have learned to do is to spend more time with my family.

Lately when my 12-year-old hugs me, I stay there in that hug until she lets go. Sunlight floods my body.

I think of this girl and how I could spend an entire day hugging her. I look at this wire replica of herself she made in her 5th grade classroom. Last night, she had a homework meltdown. As she curled up in my lap (as well as she can as she now is just half a head shorter than me), I asked her, why all the tears?

“Because I’m not good enough,” she answered.

My words flew back at her and I asked her how someone who just received a report card filled with A’s and B’s couldn’t be good enough.

“But I get those with help,” she said.

Oh honey, yes, you have accommodations. Dammit, the comparison game is so easy to play. Aren’t those kids who don’t have learning difference accommodations smarter than me? I tell her smart is just a funny word and society places many definitions on it. But mostly I just hold her, cancel homework for the rest of the night while thinking up a million ways to convince her she’s enough.

But still and yet, mostly I just focus on spending time with this girl. I keep her up late, watching “Cheers” with my husband and me. While tucking her in, we talk about exchanging negative self-talk with positive self-talk. Yet in a place that’s untouched by this lingo, I know the best medicine for our hurts is love and being together. Maybe this time together will involve colored wires that I learn  to twist into a stick figure rendition of myself. Maybe not. Either way, that ride down the second half of the mountain is speeding up.