TIME IN A BOTTLE

Here is another of my weekly columns that kind of sums up the month of September , 2008 for our family ...

TIME IN A BOTTLE
By Jocelyn Hainsworth

If I could save time in a bottle / The first thing that I’d like to do / Is to save every day / Till eternity passes away / Just to spend them with you.

I’m not normally a fan of Jim Croce’s music, but these words and the hauntingly simple melody that they are sung to are different. Who hasn’t wished for more minutes of the special times in their lives? Who wouldn’t love to go back and re-live certain moments? Who doesn’t wish that they could keep time in a bottle? Jim’s poetry touches us all.

So much has happened at our house in the past month: the preparations for the wedding, greeting friends and guests from far and wide, playing with our grandchildren - there hasn’t been one bad moment. We’ve laughed together, shared meals together, and emptied a few bottles of wine.

There were afternoons on the deck preparing the centerpieces and bouquets for the big day, with happy kids jumping on the trampoline out in front of the house, and two little boys reactivating a couple of old Tonka trucks for gravel hauling after almost two decades of gathering dust in the basement.

The wedding day was all we could have asked for - the bride in her perfect dress and the flower girl finally being allowed to wear her pretty dress and ballerina shoes too. Everyone dressed up and their hair done, with cameras clicking steady to capture the moment. The bride’s and groom’s friends, our friends, close family and distant well-wishers; they all made the day special.

There have been quad rides and cattle drives, potato digs and many little handfuls of petunias picked specially for me. The warmth of a sleeping baby cuddled in my arms, the wriggle and giggles of a little girl trying (not too hard) to escape being tickled. The happy grin of a little boy being allowed to steer the lawn mower on his own. Reading the same favorite book over and over so many times everyone in the house has it memorized now.

A night, even in mid September, that was warm enough for us to build a bonfire so that we could laugh and tell stories around the flames until almost the midnight hour, and another night when Grandpa treated everyone first to ice cream, and then to fire works.

If I could make days last forever / If words could makes wishes come true / I’d save every day like a treasure and then / Again, I would spend them with you.

Of course, short of inventing a time machine, there is no way to actually live a day over again. Instead we have been given the power of memory. All the experiences of our lives are stored in our own personal memory bottles, for us to revisit time and again when a certain scent or song or sound stirs them to life.

It is so fitting that all these recent memories were made during this season of autumn. My favorite of all seasons. A time of fullness, of ripeness, of exquisite completeness.
There will never be a time when I breathe in the heady fragrance of harvest that I won’t think of these days. When the softer sunshine of autumn warms my skin, even years from now, I will think of these days. When the trees take on their fall colors, I will remember these days. When the evening temperatures begin to dip low enough to put frost on the ground, I will remember these days. And yet, even as I recall those memories, I will likely be making new ones too.

Jim’s song speaks of saving time until eternity passes away, not something that we’ll ever be able to do, but a memory bottle that always has room for more seems to be a pretty nice consolation prize.