A Time for Remembering

Looking forward from our youth and looking back after youth has passed present two vastly different pictures. As parents we see the future in our children. But as children we see the future in ourselves. When we are young, parents may look very old to us, even as we look very young to them. And all of us change so gradually that we may not know when it is that we are looked upon as being old by others. The generations come and go, with time moving all things on their way, with children becoming parents, parents becoming grandparents, and youth growing up to take their places, while others move on, as life endlessly unfolds. There are times when we would stay the step of time. There are days we wish would linger longer. But time will not be stayed. There are times, with our children around us, when we would like to keep them as they are⎯safe from life. But children grow up, days pass, and the good years and the bad move on at the same measured pace, although to us it seems the good move faster and the bad drag with agonizing slowness. There are times when we have with us mothers, fathers, loved ones, and assume that it will always be so. But it is not always so. And then there come those times when our hearts cry out for a turning back of the hours and of the years.

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,

Make me a child again just for tonight!

Mother, come back from the echoless shore,

Take me again to your heart, as of yore;

Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,

Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;

Over my slumbers your loving watch keep,

Rock me to sleep, Mother, rock me to sleep.

But time does not turn back. It moves its measured course. And so let there be a renewal of thoughtfulness from the old to the young, and from the young to the old, for there is no time of life when our feelings are not acute, no time when we are not hurt by thoughtlessness or neglect. All have need to be love, understood, remembered.