forty
two.

reprise 2002:

For I have known them all already, known them all--Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...T. S. Eliot

We spoke of chronos and kairos, linear time, and the timeless moment. Human time, measured out increment by increment, and God's time--the graced time where a minute or an hour will pass, but we, so immersed in the moment, cannot measure its passing. While my friend and I were speaking so deeply of our lives, were we in chronos or kairos?

And as I mark the passage of another year, as I slip into something by the extraordinarily ugly name of middle age, where am I? Chronos or kairos? For surely I am fourteen, full of hopes and high school angst. And I know I am 21, and my boyfriend is slipping a small ruby ring on my finger. Here, I am 30, with a baby on my hip and a preschooler holding my hand. And now I am forty, belatedly feeling like a grown up. It is all one to me.

The chronology is true. I have measured out my life thought by thought, circumstance by circumstance. It is marked by the lines on my face. The weight of our culture presses upon me, encouraging me to deny what I know in my heart. That is, time is escorting me on toward diminishment, toward an end. It is this knowledge that I need to befriend, for it wiil lead me to better appreciate chronos. And kairos is always right here, waiting for me, in the space between a heartbeat, the time it takes to look deeply into another person's eyes, to connect.