"Enjoy these years, they go by so quickly..."

Every new mother has heard these words, meant to describe the blink of an eye that constitutes childhood. Every old mother has said them, too. I didn't respond positively when I was on the receiving end: sleep-deprived and unsure what to do with collicky new babies, time couldn't move fast enough for me. Hindsight brings a different perspective, of course, and I now utter the same words to others embarking on the adventure of motherhood. They're likely no more receptive than I was when I walked in their shoes.

I thought about that today as I shared a church pew with the lovely, lively adults my collicky babies have become, at a memorial service for the mother of a couple of their grade-school classmates. Beyond the obvious sorrow of the occasion, the realization of just how swiftly time really does pass, and how little of it we're really granted here, hit me like a slap in the face. And left me with a great jolt of inspiration to appreciate what moments I have left.

The woman whose life we celebrated was a vibrant and generous soul, beautiful by every definition of the word. I hadn't known her well, but years spent with other parents on gymnasium bleachers cheering grade-school basketball games or arranging cookies at parent association meetings bring a sense of community that lingers well beyond graduation. She couldn't have been much older than I -- which of course I regard as far too young -- and in her final months had faced debilitating illness with grace that was truly inspirational.

The church was packed, and among the masses were faces that brough back all sorts of fond personal memories. The kids' teachers. Their classmates, who just yesterday I toted in the back of the mini-van and hosted at sleep-overs, now handsome young adults. Their parents, the moms and dads who sat alongside us at all those school plays, track meets and pizza parties, now a bit grayer, slower of step, but hanging in there.

The people with whom I have traveled through what really were some of the best years of my life, now gathered to acknowledge the passing of one among us. The first among us, a sober reminder of what awaits the rest, and a gift to someone like me, who has focused on much on just getting through those years that I've failed to appreciate their blessings.

I'll stop advising young mothers to enjoy these years. It's a lesson that can only be learned first-hand and after the fact anyway.

I'm better served looking in the mirror when I deliver that lecture, and if I pay attention this time, perhaps I'll discover that my best days aren't past, but ahead.

Stalked by my computer

One of the down sides of living in the moment is that you start to notice things. And one thing I've noticed lately does not make me happy. I think I'm being stalked by my computer. Or more specifically, by Facebook.

I dipped my toe into the world of social media by establishing a presence on Facebook. I don't exactly know what I'm doing there yet, and I am definitely flummoxed by most of the rest of the tools like Twitter and Digg and whatever else. But I sure recognize good old-fashioned real-world target marketing when I see it, even in Web 2.0 (or are we on to 3.0 by now?)

On the right hand side of my Facebook page are ads for various products. Today's assortment of messages exhort me to drink red wine as an anti-aging elixir, offer me something to flatten my bulging belly and announce a great new way to erase 40 years of wrinkles.

On the day after my birthday, while I munch on a scone from the coffee shop that undoubtedly will not flatten my belly and check out the invitation to my 40th high school reunion, I'm not saying I'm not an appropriate target for these messages. But how do they know this?

I don't think I remember telling Facebook my birth year, although that might have been a requirement for participation. Maybe it's my name, which was the most popular for girls born in 1949-1954, then faded into oblivion forever branding me a boomer (as though the flabby abs and wrinkles aren't enough to give it away....) Maybe somebody at Facebook looks at the profile pictures and delivers the pages of the plump and/or shriveled to advertisers.

Maybe they're just good at what they do, in terms of targeting likely prospects.

Whatever the means by which they have identified me, I don't appreciate it. I wonder if I'm emitting some big scarlet O (for Old) through my fingers on the keyboard and into cyberspace. I don't like being stalked.

I guess I can just be glad they're not (yet) pitching me mortuary services.

Same old

Today is my birthday. I don't put that forth to fish for well-wishes, but because it causes me to think about traditions.

Thirty-three years ago (I remember the year clearly because I was pregnant at the time, and my daughter is now 32...) we discovered that my husband's friend's girlfriend (now wife) shared my birthday, and the four of us went out to dinner for a joint celebration. We've been going out to dinner to mark our coincidental birthdates every year since.

Every single year.

Sometimes it's just the four of us, sometimes other friends join us. Sometimes the restaurant is terrific, sometimes not so much -- like the year we went to a now-closed steakhouse and were surprised to find a cockroach emerge from under a plate and scurry across our table before being smashed by our friend wielding a water glass -- but it's usually memorable. And it's always reassuring to know that my birthday will be marked by friends, food and fun.

We have a similar tradition around New Year's Eve. Thirty years ago (soon to be pregnant that year) we'd intended to go out with another couple whose daughter was the same age as ours, but a bad snowstorm changed our plans. So we bundled up our two-year-old and made our way to our friends' home, where the girls toddled happily while we cooked dinner, drank champagne and watched Dick Clark call the plays on televised Times Square revelry.

After that, it just became What We Do For New Year's Eve. That tradition has survived our friends' move to another city, family emergencies, even their trip to Hawaii, from which they returned early just so we could spend New Year's Eve together.

The years when we whipped up Steak Diane or Cream of Brie soup upstairs, while the kids celebrated with grape juice and frozen pizza in the basement, might have been the most fun. But these later years have brought good times, too, as we prepare our meal at a leisurely pace, then struggle to stay awake until midnight.

For some, I'm sure doing the same old thing for 30+ years would be boring. Even I would find too many more such traditions to be stifling.

But tomorow night when we head to yet another restaurant for yet another birthday dinner -- our 34th together -- I'll be grateful for the fact that I'm still on the planet and in this unpredictable world have a few things I can count on.

Can't lose for winning

A local adult literacy program (for which I volunteer) holds an annual fund-raising spelling bee, with teams of spellers from various businesses participating. My company sponsors a team of four spellers, and holds a pre-bee to determine which of several potential spelling bee teams will go on to the big city-wide bee.

That pre-bee was today, and I was on one of the teams. We came in third, so no city-wide spelling glory for us. But that's okay because our goals were to 1) not be eliminated first, and 2) also not be the last one standing. None of us wanted to advance to the big bee - we only signed up to participate in the internal event for the fun of it.

But a funny thing happened as other teams fell away and we remained in the hunt. We really did not want to win. But we didn't want to be wrong, either....

So basically, it was lucky for us that none of us knew how to spell (or pronounce, or define or use in a sentence) the word that eliminated us from the contest. I'd never heard or seen it before and six hours later don't even remember what it was. But in the few seconds we were given to consult over its possible spelling, we were as determined to try to get it right as anybody going for a first-place finish.

Maybe it's personal pride. Or maybe there's something hard-wired in us, or conditioned by American society, that pushes our competitive buttons. In any case, something overtook reason, compelling us to win, even when the only real way to win was to lose.

So tonight, as better sense returns and I reflect upon the day, I can only be grateful to fate for saving us from our competitive selves.

Coming up for light

It's cold again today. By the end of February, I'm ready for the end of winter, too. It's a lot like the way I feel about two-thirds of the way through my morning strength-training class at the gym - enough already, let's get to the part where we get to lie down and stretch.

This year Mother Nature has teased us mercilessly with a day here and a day there of balm, quickly dashed by single-digit temperatures. Like another round of deadlifts and mountain-climbers, it's wearisome.

But even in sub-freezing temperatures, February also brings hope. After weeks of indiscernable shift in the balance between day and night, the pace begins to pick up. Just in the last week or so, the day is brightening when I take Mr. James for his morning walk, and there's still a bit of sunlight on the horizon when I walk home from the bus stop in the evening.

Even if I didn't check the daily sunrise and sunset times in the newspaper, or remember the lessons from 7th grade science class about the earth's annual trips around the sun, I know from memories of Februaries past that brighter days are on the way.

I thought about this one day last week while reading a Newsweek article about economic meltdowns over time. We've all seen the articles comparing our current situation to slowdowns in 2000, the early 1980s, even the dismal days of the Great Depression. This article went a lot further back, however, detailing the economy's ups and downs since the late 1700s.

The overarching take-away for me is that for every plunge, there has been a rebound. Sometimes sooner rather than later, but it seems that centuries of experience tell us that what goes down, economically speaking, eventually comes back up. Maybe not with the same predictability as winter that turns to spring and 15 hour nights become 15 hour days. But the cold, dark days do cycle into warmth and light.

Which of course doesn't make it any easier right now, when we don't know if it's November, with the darkest, coldest days ahead, or January, when the worst is behind us. I'm thinking it's probably the former. I fervently hope that I, and those I love, don't find ourselves out in the cold and that those who suffer find a haven to survive the arctic blast.

But when I step outside to take Mr. James for his morning walk, and see day breaking in the east, I have hope.

Moment of zen

My various radios are all permanently tuned to NPR. This is not just because I'm a news junkie and public radio seems to be one of the last remaining places to find the practice of journalism in gathering and delivering the news.

It's because now and then, amid the reports from Iran and Afghanistan and interviews with experts real and self-proclaimed, come sweet little stories about ordinary people doing things that make a positive difference or reveal a useful truth.

This morning's Weekend Edition program offered one of these stories. It's about a woman who plays the harp in the emergency room of a busy urban hospital to bring some calming comfort to patients and staff.

It made me smile on a Valentine's Day morning, a moment worth noticing, and in hopes that it does the same for others, here's a link.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100680193

Concrete connections

Taking Mr. James for a walk on a perfectly gorgeous day - one more like April or May, not February, dimming the memory of a 10-degree morning just four days ago - I was reminded of why I was drawn to this neighborhood almost 30 years ago.

To be sure, it was partly the charm of the 1920s homes, the value for the money, the small yards that would be quick to mow and the appeal of features like hardwood floors, arched doorways and crown molding everywhere. (That last item, by the way, became much less attractive when it was time to paint...)

But what really tipped the scale for me was something far more pedestrian. Literally.

Sidewalks.

The sidewalks in our neighborhood encourage intermingling among the residents of homes along the street. They give the adults a route for a summer evening stroll or a brisk hike to the bus stop, and the children a guided path to friends and new experiences.

When our kids were little, every summer Saturday brought a cavalcade of bikes, trikes and Big Wheels as the neighborhood youngsters traveled safely up and down the cement corridors for hours on end. Sidewalks also defined a boundary the kids generally respected, although I do remember a neighbor mom's challenge keeping an adventuresome preschooler out of the street after a block party closed the road for an evening, calling the sidewalk's barrier power into question.

Today's scarier times and scheduled activities have reduced the neighborhood Big Wheel traffic somewhat, and tree roots beneath have cracked some of the concrete slabs. Insufferable spiny balls that comprise the bumper crop of droppings from sweet gum trees that line our street make the trip hazardous for the inattentive.

But our sidewalks still carry moms pushing strollers and people like me walking dogs. The dogs sniff each other, the people exchange friendly greetings, and we go along our way feeling like we're part of a community.