I wanted to follow up on my recent post about reading all the Life magazine issues from 1963.

I am fascinated by the nature of time, how the present tumbles into the faraway past in mere seconds. We lived in New York City in our early twenties; it has only been eleven years since we moved away, but it feels more like several lifetimes ago. On the other hand, I have a very clear memory of sitting on the couch at my grandma’s house reading magazines while my sister and cousin and grandparents play a card game at the dining room table. This must have been around 1997, but it feels like exactly yesterday.

Sometimes I freeze and look around and think about how this present moment will be a really faraway moment someday. Right now we’re eating donuts at the new playground, but will my kids drive by this same playground in twenty years and think back on this time when the playground was new and they were still young?

Then I lay in bed and do time math and freak myself out about things.

Bobby Kennedy was killed in 1968, and I was born in 1983. Only fifteen years separates his death from my life. Fifteen years! There are about fifteen years between my youngest son’s birthday and the September 11 attacks. Fifteen years might as well be fifteen seconds! Fifteen years is nothing!

My mother was born in 1955, just ten years after World War II ended. In 1955 there were Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans walking around who were in their 30s. There are very few of either of those left now, and I would guess most of them are not walking very well anymore.

I remember reading history books as a kid in the 1990s and thinking the 70s were ancient history, but I did the math the other day and realized that in the 90s and the 70s were only TWENTY YEARS APART. DID EVERYONE ELSE ALREADY KNOW THIS?!?

In 1991 when the Cold War ended my second grade teacher gathered us all up in a circle and explained what was going on, and she said to us “This is a really important moment in history; you’ll always remember this moment.” I, being seven years old and not an enthusiastic newspaper reader at the time, didn’t even really understand what the Cold War was or why I should care that it was over, but I did take note of the moment. I still think of Ms. Teeley whenever I see the Berlin Wall come down in a documentary.

“I was alive when this happened!” I think to myself. “I remember being a person when this happened!”

This post has gone off the rails. I could really go on about this for paragraphs, and probably will in the future.

But will the paragraphs feel like seconds or decades?