Spinning

We all grew up at breakneck speeds, the world spinning, rushing past in a largely incomprehensible blur. Daisy picking and bug catching and talking to the wizard who lived under the willow. Time spun, too fast to know and too slow to tolerate so we urged it on, yearning for the day that we could do all those ‘grown- up’ things we understood the edges of and pined for the novelty of.

See her hair streaming behind her as she runs, years falling into her in the span of seconds. Only she knows that she’s moving in slow motion, or was it stop motion? But to her family, her age blurs together because she is growing up too fast. All kids her age do.

A top spins on a table until it falls like kids holding hands and singing ‘ring around the rosy’ until they all fall down and breath catches before they stand up because the falling is so recognizable and how do they get back up? Because maybe watching them close enough will teach me how to do it.

Perhaps it’s that they’re lighter. They aren’t weighed down by the worries of years, the fear of failure or is it the fear of oblivion? They don’t know that sometimes when you fall, you don’t get back up, so, incessantly, they get back up and there was never any doubt that they would. Except for in those of us who were watching with hitched breath.

When I close my eyes and imagine it, they don’t fall. They only spin, faster and faster until the centripetal force pulls their hands apart and they fly away, scattered to the corners of the earth where they stand or fall according to their own destinies.

I think maybe I’m kneeling, trying to decide to stand up, if it’s worth the risk of falling.