Time Flies...

Zedder and Mom...Brooklyn, NY...July 2010

I’d once heard this terribly suspicious bit of information that said people in temperate climates have a greater difficulty in remembering events from their past. The wisdom is that lacking any really obvious and discernable seasons to attach their memories to, they float untethered and eventually drift off into the fog of several decades worth of similar experiences. It sounds plausible, and just might be true, but living here in Southwestern Ontario most of my life I’ve had more than my share of seasonal beacons to strap my memories to. None, however, more sturdy than the aging of this daughter of ours.

Zoey is two years old, with approximately two more months and two more weeks piled on top of that…an impressive span of twos stretching across the page, and I can mark most of my moments from these past two years with an intimate accuracy that trumps anything I might have routinely anchored in a season before. My life has now become partitioned off in Zoey moments rather than complex events or seasons, and it’s stunning how much more aware I am, and have been, these last eight hundred or so days. It’s difficult to slip a memory past me now.


Daddy and Zed...Central Park, NY...March 2011

In California, years are said to pass like weeks. Everything happens in the fog of a perpetual spring. One day you are 23 and single and poor and drunk most of the time and the next day you are 33 and a bit richer but still drunk most of the time. It's difficult to distinguish one stage from the other. However, even in the near perfect weather of California's Central Coast I'd wager a parent could quickly connect the dots that compose their life's most meaningful moments simply by making reference to their child. Parenting, I've learned, is certainly in direct competition with the calendar. Here, resting comfortably atop Southeastern Michigan, we've not only got Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter to lean memories on, we've also got first steps, first words, Zo's first big girl bed, poddy training, and a million other markers to remind us where we are in space and time. California would be nice, but for the time being we're living on Zoey Island anyway. It's a pretty nice place to live.