I’ve been retired a month now.  My hope before I left work was that time would unfold in the slow dreamy way summer days did when I was a kid.

You remember those days don’t you?  Warm summer days when you got up with the morning light and lingered over breakfast, wandered outside later in the day, climbed a few trees, goofed off with neighborhood kids, stayed out late into the evening chasing fireflies.

Each day stretched out indefinitely.

Retirement started out that way.  The first few days, perhaps the first week, seemed to last forever.   Even now most of the day I don’t know what time it is, and that’s fine with me.  And I’ve long since lost track of what day of the week it might be.

But time is speeding up now, just as my grandmother told me, years ago, it would.

Suddenly it’s Tuesday, another weekend ended, another week already moving along, a whole month gone since I last commuted to work.  Midsummer and the 4th of July are right around the corner.   Somehow a quick after lunch nap stretches into early evening, a few minutes reading on the deck out back and the morning is gone, check Facebook and the sun drops below the horizon without warning.

Time seems to be an elastic band snapping back at me with intensity, a pendulum swinging toward the future at increasing speed.  The world seems to be screaming past, daring me to catch a ride, to fling myself up into the speeding vehicle moving toward something unknown.  But I’m dragging my feet, hanging on to the golden sun, the misty mornings, the glowing fireflies.

I’m hanging on, trying to slow time down.  Just for a little bit longer.