Anybody who thinks time doesn’t pass more quickly the older you get is simply dead wrong.
It was 12 years ago this month that Nicole and I visited Pauline and her family in the mountains 40 miles east of Seattle. They are enjoying their home leave after two years in Beijing before going to Virginia for language training in preparation for three years in Surabaya.
Before we go any further, the picture at the beginning isn’t from then. It was taken this week in Tunisia, and 11-month old Madison from 2009 is now Artemis, third from left in the photo and six weeks away from becoming a teenager.
See what I mean about time racing by.
Twelve years, just like that.
Of course it doesn’t feel like that for Arti. For her it’s every bit of her life she can remember and then some. Ten months earlier in Beijing, she fell asleep on my chest as a 10-day-old baby. And that subsequent summer east of Seattle, she was becoming a total joy to spend time with.
She was the Amazing Baby then, and I wrote about her dozens of times on a previous website.
The time we spent in Washington in 2009 was a wonderful vacation with plenty of relaxation. It meant a lot to us to be able to spend as much time as we did with our first grandchild so early in her life. She wound up being the oldest of three, but when Pauline married for the second time in 2017, all of a sudden she had three more brothers and was the second oldest of six children.
They are in Africa now, although just barely. Pauline and Johnathan are starting a three year tour in Tunisia, which is the northernmost point on the continent. All six children will attend an international school, and Arti will spend her first three teen years in Tunis. She has lived in China, Indonesia, Jamaica, Guatemala and now Tunisia. Both she and her siblings have lived in the U.S. only between tours while their parents undergo language training.
They may not be all that familiar with the Kardashians, Honey Boo Boo and the rest of television’s vast wasteland, but I guarantee you Arti and all her siblings will understand the differences — and the similarities — between people all over the world.
I have heard people comparing kids who grow up in the diplomatic corps compared to military brats, but I think the only real similarity is moving around. Diplomats generally have longer tours — Pauline did four years in Guatemala, her last posting — and my hunch is they live better too.
My daughter has reached a certain level in her career that combined with her large family gives her better housing. For one thing, their house comes with a small fruit orchard and an actual swimming pool. Not bad.
At any rate, I have six wonderful grandchildren, from Malachi (16 this fall) to beautiful little Albanie (7 this Halloween). My only disappointment is that I won’t get to see as much of their lives as my grandparents did of mine. Both of my maternal grandparents were around till I was 35, although my paternal grandparents died before I was born.
I’ll just enjoy as much as I get of them for as long as I’m here.
Time passes quickly, but not that quickly.