Sunrise, Sunset

 

               “The days are long, but the years are short.”

 

 This little bit of folk wisdom has kept coming up recently— in conversations, books I’m reading, shows I’m watching. I think we all can relate. Especially parents suddenly stunned when their children are grown. But also elders finding a number like 70 or 80 or 90 attached to their birthday. That universal astonishment—“How did this happen?!”

 

Yesterday, I went to a cross-country meet with San Francisco School students participating. My daughter Talia is the coach of these kids from 5^th to 8^th grade. The 5^th graders were the preschoolers I taught my last year of teaching, the 8^th graders the 3^rd graders and some of them now taller than me. Talia is now in her 16^th year as the 5^th grade teacher in the school that she went to for 11 years, where her mother taught art for 42 years and her father taught music for 45 years. That’s a lot of years. And sometimes indeed it feels like they rushed by in a flash. 

 

Earlier that day, I went to lunch with Don Arbor, someone who was in my 8^th grade class a lifetime ago. We only crossed paths that one year and weren’t even friends then. But through a mutual friend, he appeared some 5 or 6 years ago and we figured out that we had played some basketball a bit back then in New Jersey. Now he is an environmental lawyer, but also a recording musician—Hope Is Hard to Kill is his most recent CD—and we began a ritual of meeting a few times a year at Mario’s Cigar Box Restaurant in North Beach. (May I recommend the grilled eggplant on panini sandwich?). Always a pleasure to just sit down and chat and marvel at the fact that our brief 8^th grade time together was 61 years ago! 

 

It was also over six decades ago that my parents took me to my first Broadway musical—Fiddler on the Roof with Zero Mostel. (My dad had taken some art classes with Zero, so he wrangled a short backstage pass and I got to meet that larger-than-life man.) One of the most memorable songs of that show was Sunrise Sunset, a lovely musical expression of this immutable truth: 

 

“Sun rise, sun set, swiftly pass the years…”

 

The folk singer Malvina Reynolds also has a sweet song on the same theme:

 

Where are you going, my little one, little one
Where are you going, my baby, my own?

Turn around and you're two
Turn around and you're four
Turn around and you're a young girl going out of my door
Turn around, turn around
Turn around and you're a young girl going out of my door

Where are you going, my little one, little one
Little dirndls and petticoats, where have you gone?

Turn around and you're tiny
Turn around and you're grown
Turn around and you're a young wife with babes of your own

 

So my friends, savor each day and may the years slow down!