Time

TIME
By Doris Meakim

         I wasn't at all surprised when Julie came home all excited and told me she was in the play. They're doing Our Town and she had gotten the part of Emily. She's the perfect choice. With her pert young beauty she could be Emily Gibbs to the very life.

         It's been a hectic few weeks with rehearsals and getting the costumes made and all that. Julie tried on the bridal gown this afternoon. She was an absolute picture wearing that dress.

         My little Julie in a bridal gown! That was a sight that brought me up short. Of course, like the old fashioned skirt and shirtwaist she has to wear for her other scenes, it was just a costume for a play But I suddenly realized that before too much longer there might be a real bridal gown for Julie. Seventeen years of her life have passed already, like no time at all. She will graduate this year. She looks grown up already and it happened, as it seemed, almost while I wasn't looking.

         And now I've seen her dressed for a wedding. A play acting wedding, of course. But soon, very soon, there may be a real wedding with my little girl dressed in white like this with flowers in her hair. She will walk down a real aisle in a real church where we will give her over to some young man who better be good enough for her! They will begin their own life and start the circle all over again.

         Now I am thinking I have to be wide awake every minute! I can't miss any moment of this wonderful part of my life. My daughter is becoming a woman before my eyes, my sons are becoming men, two of them already taller than me. I don't want to wake up some day and discover it all passed me by and I missed it!

         It's like Julie's lines in the play: do we ever really see and know one another while we can? Do we ever really know what we have while we have it?

         It all goes by too fast, too fast!