The Race We Shouldn't Win

 

Talk faster. Walk faster. Grow up faster. Get to school faster, get through school faster, get a job, get settled. We keep saying it, all of it, like there's a finish line somewhere and the sooner they get there, the better we've done our job.

I catch myself doing it every morning. Shoes, bag, breakfast, hurry, hurry, hurry. I hate mornings for exactly this reason. Not because they're hard, but because I become someone I don't recognize. A man in a rush, standing next to a child who isn't rushing anywhere, dragging him toward a clock that means nothing to him and everything to me.

Then I stop and think, what am I actually rushing toward? Nothing that's mine to rush. He'll get to all of it in his own time. The only thing that's really mine, right now, is the chance to be here for the slow part. That's not something to get through. It's something to be glad I get to have.

Avyaan draws for a while most days. I don't fully know what it is about watching him. There's no destination in it, no next step he's working toward. He picks a word he likes the sound of and says it again and again, just because it feels good in his mouth. Nobody taught him that repetition is allowed to be its own reward. He just knows.

But the hour I'd protect above all of them is the one that has no name. Lights off, all three of us, me, Soumya, him, and an hour that isn't going anywhere. He asks questions I don't have ready answers for. Who is this to you, and what is that to you, and why is this person related to that person. He asks about God like it's a fact he can pin down. He tells us stories, his own, made up as he goes, and I've stopped trying to follow the plot and just started listening to his voice do it.

I don't rush that hour. I've never once wanted it to end sooner. Which tells me something I don't love admitting, that I know exactly how to be patient. I just choose when.

I was rushed too, once. I don't remember most of what I was rushed through. But I remember, clearly, the few unhurried hours someone chose to spend with me instead. That's the part I want to give him. Not the milestones. The hour with no name.

So maybe the shift isn't a big one. Maybe it's just this, stop treating it like a task with a schedule, and start treating it like a process I get to be part of. Let the mornings be a little slower even if it costs me a few minutes. Let the drawing go on a little longer. Let the lights off hour run past sixty minutes some nights, just because we can.

I get this time. Not everyone does. And I'm not going to let it go by feeling like an item on a list.