I stood in my office looking out the large north facing
window. Under the row of pine trees, small birds bounced around, shuffling
through the leaves, looking for something to eat. These weren’t the ubiquitous sparrows,
nor the numerous finches, not even my favorite black capped chickadee. These
birds were rounder, with darker heads and white bellies. Juncos. The Dark-eyed
Juncos are winter birds in South Dakota.
The seasons had changed. The
darkness of winter was coming quickly. As the days shortened, the juncos ushered
in the cold and the shadows. I stood
staring out that window at the group of chubby juncos with silent tears streaming down my face.
I watched those adorable juncos move about their day as if
they had been here for months.
Seeing
them, I could no longer deny the passage of time.
From January through summer we watched the days
lengthen, until summer breezes turn to chilly autumn winds, and in the blink of an eye the hours of daylight dwindled. The leaves changed, work campaigns ended,
and the juncos arrived.
The world seemed
to be constantly changing, evolving even, and here I was, just the same as always.
Still fat, still a chatterbox,
still worrying about my dad too much, still Auntie Carla to the ever increasing
children of siblings and best friends, and still childless. The days and months
and years seem to both crawl and fly by in some twisted joke of the
universe.
For the first quarter of our
lives we’re always desiring to be older, to get to the next step, until
somewhere in your late twenties you realize you want to stop time- you want an
extension on this assignment called adulthood.
