Peggy’s Prompt—when she was young

Peggy’s Prompt—when she was young


How shall I begin? With “when she was young” or with something else? Back in the day; when we was kids, growin’up; she was a handful when she was young;

When she was young, she never once thought about being old, but now that she’s old, she frequently thinks about being young. Young, when she awoke in the morning with no aches and pains, no tired eyes, no desperate need to pee, when the sky through the window was blue, the clouds were pink and fluffy, and the scent of orange blossoms or night-blooming cereus drifted in on the breeze. She’d give a lot for one of those mornings again, but she knows it won’t happen.

Time does not reverse. Time is the most linear thing in the universe, she thinks. Although you can stretch it out with boredom, or shorten it with fear, it still marches forward, either upward or downward, but never backwards. There was a time when she’d fritter away hours, even days, waiting for the next good thing, but now she hates to waste a minute by “doing nothing”, even if, or especially if the time could have been spent in watching her cats stretch, or the birds fly to the feeder, or the squirrel jump from the tree to the telephone pole. These are the good moments, the everyday precious moments that bring pleasure and gladness. Moments not wasted on attending to the random thoughts that pour through her head, coming from nowhere, heading nowhere, but eating up the never-to-be-regained moments of her treasured life.