You can't hold onto time

There's a little general store in Centerville that caters to the tourists. All things cute and Cape Coddish.

Yesterday, Sue and I stopped in there on our walk home from the beach. Sue wanted some chocolate. I walked in, made my way to the back of the store, and turned right around and went back outside. Too many kids and milling tourists.

On the porch there are two benches, cliches that you see not just on the Cape but other touristy American escapes, one marked Republicans and the other marked Democrats. This is a gentle poke at our Americanism. We're different, but we can still get along. Funny, the Democratic bench is on the right.

I sat in the Democratic bench for no other reason other than it was there. Also on the porch are two little wooden cutouts of children. Caucasian, smiling, cheery, dressed in their summer shorts. A family of four, Mom, Dad, and young boy and girl, came out and Mother stood them side by side, the boy next to the little boy cutout and the girl against the girl, and began snapping pictures. "I've taken your pictures next to them when you were shorter than they were," she said. Everyone was in good cheer, the children at first uncooperative, playing the classic American child's role (Tom Sawyer, Scout) of smart, independent, spunky, but quickly came into line with one stern but loving remark from Mom.

I stood up and removed myself from the picture, watching. And it made me feel so sad. Watching them marking time like that, trying to hold on to something that was dear and precious to them, probably knowing or understanding, assuming or even worse, supposing, that it's impossible to hold on to time. To stop it.

When you're old, what do you have but your memories? I don't know, but I hope I have something more than that.