A New Pace

14w 4d


With my ever-growing belly, I find the need to slow down. I used to make The Flash look slow with my quick moves walking downtown, passing the old people with their canes, the ever slow tourists and bikers alike. Now, the old people give me the finger as they walk passed me.

I have always been an observant of people. They are walking stories and if you pay enough attention, they tell you by how they look and their behavior. I wrote this poem last year when I saw this old lady with sagging breasts, in a white Puma jumpsuit, neon pink Nike's to match her lipstick that ran off the corners of her wrinkled mouth. Her hair as white as the suit, high and round, teased beyond frizz like a birds nest, her hand getting lost in it like a plane through thick white clouds. That was all of 10 seconds. Now, I am forced to take time not only to get from point A to point B, but to pay attention to all the minute, yet equally as important points in between.

With cell phones, text messages, instant messaging, email, we get instant answers, products, contacts. Is that however, what we really want? I still write notes and letters to people and mail them out and I receive them. Isn't it nice when you receive a letter from a friend among the pile of bills? With life taking over, I understand the need for emails. "How are you?" "What are you up to?' "Hope we an get together soon." I am there with you. But what about having a long conversation on how we are really doing, making and hearing each other laugh or wiping a tear? How about actually getting together? And it doesn't have to cost anything. A game of Scrabble (my favorite), a museum tour, a walk in the park.

I am 30. I am not old by any means, but I have already lived 30 years of my life. Have I made those connections? The true connections that count? Not through email, or im, or texts. But through personal connections, where I have made memories that will last a lifetime? Has it been enough?

The slower I move now, the more I see. Those people who take time to walk a little slower, to cancel an "all important" meeting to hang out with a friend, or their spouse or their mom, that is what I want to be. Once the baby comes, I am sure it will be a lot harder to make those personal connections for I will be forming the most personal connection of all. But that doesn't mean, I don't want to be there. So, what can we both do about it now, because it goes both ways.

Are you willing to walk slower or will you let life race by?