All that's left..

 All that's left is time. I've used up my prayers, favors, and dreams over the years as my children got older and had to wonder sometimes who would outlast the other. I continue to pray it will be me. My steps are slow now, but once upon a time, I could run like the wind chasing my youngest's kite as the string slipped out of her small hands. I caught up to the wayward kite hanging onto a small branch just inches from the ground and heard my child's laughter as she clapped her hands and jumped up and down with delight. I was her hero, and when she grew up, she was mine. As we grow older, we are blessed with slowing down as it gives us more time to remember all we never want to forget of a full and busy life. Close your eyes and see the faces of those you love the most. Keep them closed as you see before you the houses turned into homes, and the family that made it all so. Smell the roast cooking for Sunday dinner as the family arrives to fill the home with smiles and never enough hugs to go around. It's all about time now, as my life winds further down to an almost full or empty hourglass, and I dare not ask for more, as that would truly be selfish. Isn't it wonderful all the magical things these tired eyes have seen? Isn't it worth telling about my adventures with the mermaids and King Neptune himself, making me a believer?

From the shores of Greece and Spain. Italy and Africa. And places whose names can neither be pronounced nor spoken. A grass hut with the secrets of opium at your request for twenty American dollars. Enough now, least I go on all day and night and then some as my book flows through me, coming to rest on stained parchment with ends burned from a carelessly placed oil lamp. Do you hear me now? Can you possibly understand that my life story is in the words I write,

and the stories read to those with an interest. The Sunday dinner is ready, and the table is filled with smiling faces, now too hungry to hear the ramblings of an old man who's closer and closer to joining his ocean family in the silence of the deep.

MO