lost in time

This whole "time" thing: you know; people are born, they are little kids, they are teenagers, they are adults, parents, grandparents, they die, that, all of it has gotten really confusing lately.

When Ben(jamin!) and Ilan were here I just so confused! Who were these half-adult people bunking in Eli's room? Were they Hadara and Eytan? No, they are real grown-ups now. I'm not sure how that happened but it did. They are the first pair of people that I ever watched go from Baby to adulthood. It's astonishing. Shocking, really. But now Ben and Ilan are apparently going to do it too. They are going to grow up, become adults. It used to be that Hadara and Eytan were like a different species from me. They were babies, I was a kid. They were kids, I was an adult. But then they caught up. Now we are pretty much the same. But Benjamin and Ilan! Come on, five minutes ago they were babies. I didn't know that it could happen again. That it keeps happening. But you should see their feet, they are bigger than mine. Also, you can talk to them, it is like talking to very bright and interesting adults. They still seem younger than me but the difference is getting blury,shrinking.

So the really scary thing that you are all telling me is that this is going to happen to Mira and Eli too. It seems beyond belief. Yet there they were, just a week ago playing with their cousins in the same way that we used to play with Benjamin and Ilan; Hadara and Eytan. A pair of children who will not stay that way. Even though these two are mine.

Then of course there are all of the people who are dead and for once I do not mean my parents. They should not be dead. It's the generation before them. They are all gone. Every one of them. The shift is almost surely complete. There are three distinct generations in our family, (except for Jeff's grandma) and we are firmly in the middle. So strange!

I get lost a lot. I almost never really know where I am going. But I didn't know that you could get lost in time. It's just the same as getting lost in space, but scarier.