It all happens so fast

So last evening, with Cleo in bed and a first coat of Valspar Sunrise Beach interior eggshell drying on the walls of the guestroom, I had a few minutes for a book that a friend recently gave me: Lewis Thomas' 1983 Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony. Given our ridiculously early bedtimes of late, I guess that this entry can qualify as early evening thoughts on Lewis' late night thoughts.

In the title essay, Thomas adopts a rather Cassandra-like tone: worried, in good early 1980s fashion, about the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, he reacts to a stretch of Mahler's piece by thinking about death, and finality. But that only leads him to recall how differently he had listened to music when he was a much younger fellow:

"I can remember with some clarity what it was like to be sixteen. I had discovered the Brahms symphonies. I knew that there was something going on in the late Beethoven quartets that I would have to figure out, and I knew that there was plenty of time ahead for all the figuring I would ever have to do. I had never heard of Mahler. I was in no hurry."

That actually sounds about right to me - even if it was EBN-OZN, rather than Brahms, that I'd recently discovered. That sense of time on hand, of infinite futures, of things to come, though: that was one of the sweetest things, looking back, of being 14, or 16.

Now that I'm a dad, though, I'm learning a different sensation. The dental assistant yesterday was the fifth, or sixth, stranger to tell me recently that it'll all go so quickly in the coming years. Sure, Cleo's only two months now, but before you know it, these well-meaning strangers say, she'll be off to college.

And that's probably right, as well. In fact, I can already see the truth in such a claim. For the first couple of months, time moved slowly, and Cleo wasn't really very different, on the outside, than she was when born. She grew, of course, but still seemed to move randomly, and to barely interact with her surroundings.

But suddenly it's all happening at once. She grasps fingers purposefully. She follows us as we walk across the room. She laughs occasionally. And, in the past few days, she sucks her thumb - and sucks, and sucks. She can even put herself to sleep after a few shockingly loud sucks on her favorite digit.

When we were 16, time seemed to stretch out before us like a cross-continental interstate. At 38, the end is always, in some sense, in sight, no matter how much we're enjoying the trip. And at two months and counting? Changes occur before the notion of time even makes sense.