Rewind, Pause, Fast Forward

Still stuck on the cassette tape/ VHS video metaphors and then I promise I’ll move on to something else. But fresh from my visit with my grandkids, these thoughts struck. 

 

If I had a choice, I would press “pause” for 10-year-old (almost 11) Malik. Such a perfect age. The physical skills to present a worthy challenge in basketball and hike 6 or 7 miles, the intellectual skills to read to each other and discuss, the independence to make himself a bacon-egg-sandwich each morning and wash the pan and load his dish in the dishwasher, the knowledge to help me use the washing machine, the sweetness to still hug and cuddle a bit (though not quite as exuberantly affectionately as a few years younger). Again, given a choice, I would most definitely press pause and keep enjoying him at this age for many years to come. 

 

For 14-year-old Zadie, I would press “fast-forward three or four years, hopefully to a time when the one-word conversations might expand to full sentences and even paragraphs, the disappearance into her room might change to staying in her seat long after dinner’s eaten to keep talking or play a game or two, the independence to drive herself to friends’ house or athletic events, the maturity to cook a few dinners for the family and/or clean up without being asked. While still the childlike quality to dance around the house singing her favorite song. All of the above (except driving) show themselves in short snippets of “coming attractions” but you can’t depend on any of them. So yes to “fast forward.”

As for me, I would press “pause.” In the moment, still fit enough to walk 8 and more miles, bike 20 and more miles, sit zazen in half-lotus and healthy enough, with even my little complaints like the off-and-on dizziness of the last two years are mysteriously (and blessedly) gone. My teaching is at the top of my game, piano playing mostly steadily improving, writing holding steady with occasional flashes of eloquence and my lifelong “can’t do” attitude about solving mechanical or household physical problems softening to “I can figure this out”—and then I do! No one I can think of that I would cross the street if I saw them coming the other way, ongoing connections with friends, family and colleagues. So yes to “pause.” Though I would like to cheat and re-set the counter to 55 instead of 75 without erasing the last twenty years.

 

And you? What is your list of pause, rewind, fast forward?