Time is so malleable and so flexible. The first four months of A's life felt like years. Decades, perhaps. Trapped in the whirlwind of sleeplessness and screaming felt like a mini hell. I did not relish that time and I do not miss it. Our pediatrician asks us at every appointment if we are "having fun yet." The first time I truly responded yes was at her last check up. Nine months in I was starting to really smile again. Nine months.

There are these times that move so slowly and times that seem to move so quickly we are unable to fathom or process that we are hurtling forward at alarming speed.

Much of adulthood seems to fall under the alarming speed category and I wonder if this is because we put so many of the things that slow time down on pause. I ceased writing for a very long time. It's been years since I lay in bed until I was bored, dreaming up unknown lands and monsters and friends who exist only to me.

When I was a little girl, I would lay in bed as long as I possibly could, thinking that my brothers and dad would remark on just how long I slept when I finally came down. I failed every time. When I came down to join in the cartoon fest, the most I got was a suggestion to pour myself a bowl of cereal.

I remember the length of a summer day through my child eyes. From morning to night an entire kingdom could rise and fall. Alliances between brother and sister could shift and the friend you woke up to was the enemy by nightfall. Night games and toes pressed between green grass and mud felt blessedly long. Dusk falling neither too quick or too slow but precisely appropriate for the last game of hide and seek to feel peacefully, perfectly timed.

The recollections of childhood are more a long series of sensations. The long-awaited cool air of the evening pushing out the oppression of ninety degree days. Moths fluttering against walls in a dark room. The wretched thrill of jumping into a pool as the sun contemplates an entrance. Stars and tents and ancient cottonwoods and crawdads running through small hands. Bikes and the burn of being out of breath and soft sheets. The fear of under the bed and cracked closets and the abstract contemplation of death. Fresh-baked cookies and bedtime stories and the comfort of my brothers breath nearby as I drift to sleep.

Childhood is a fleeting embrace. Both ethereal and ephemeral. A memory of a trip once taken, both familiar and utterly, unattainably foreign.