Just a minute ago it was spring and we were young

by Don L. Burg

Seems like just a minute ago it was spring, the trees were green and the wind had a warm, clean feel to it.  Now, there is a dry coldness to the wind and those leaves are all falling, going home to their final rest.

Of course it also seems like a minute ago I was suiting up in a smelly, crowded high school locker room along with my buddies to do battle with the neighboring team on our new football field.

It was just a minute ago that I was in a military uniform waiting for that time to be over. But when it was over, I discovered that in those few minutes I was away, the world I left behind had disappeared. I spent a few minutes lost.

Recently, watching the golden sunset behind a row of pine trees along my western property line, I got to thinking about this morning and how I had enjoyed having one of my favorite breakfasts and a good warm cup of coffee, and it seemed like it happened a minute ago.

I guess what it boils down to is there is no such thing as time in our mind. Time has to do with watches and calendars and tides and seasons, and things happening in sequential order. But in our mind everything that happens to us is a single and separate event. And those events come back to us at random, having nothing to do with time or order.

When those memories do come back it seems they are fresh and real and we don't rationally think about the time or year that it actually happened, until we think about it, and remember, and realize that it was a long, long time ago, and we are not the same as we were, and the people around us are not the same as they were, and the world is not the same as it was.

I sat down here just to send a few pictures of the sun shining on the changing leaves, now that, too, has been a minute ago.