There will come a time when your youngest child is no longer young. And you will look back and wonder where the time went.
You will see them, grown and maturing, graduated with a cap and gown (or at least, hopefully) and they will be on their own,—they’ll be on their way into an entirely new life without the need for parental consent or supervision.
Maybe they’ll live close or maybe they’ll move away. Perhaps they will be married. Maybe they will become parents. If not married or acting as parents, maybe our children will move forward and find their way along a path which they have chosen for themselves.
Eventually, a time will come when our children are no longer children. And no matter how we see them; no matter what the memories are of the day when they came into the world, alas, a day will come when our children will be fully grown.

There are times when I think of you and the things we said but more importantly, there are times when I think of you and the things I wished I told you.
I think about the things I wish I could have said to you. There are things I wish I had the words to explain or the patience to express myself.

Of all things I know, I know for sure that life is an eventual and an inevitable process. Life happens. Things begin and also, things end at a time when we least expect them to.
Life is always changing. This happens every day, even when we don’t want it to. Life is unavoidable. Trust me on this because sometimes we learn this lesson the hard way.

There was a little old boat in the rear, left corner of my backyard. The boat was aluminum, small with two bench seats across the beam, and while my memory of this is equally as small, I remember tiny glimpses of the little old boat.
I remember me, sitting in the boat with a life preserver that was perhaps bigger than my entire body. This is my first memory of her. We were fishing someplace near City Island.
I somehow caught a little starfish, if I’m not mistaken. This was before we moved out to The Island and away from my birthplace in Queens.

I have no idea where I will end up in the later years of my life. The one thing I learned is life changes and life can change quickly and unexpectedly.
I change. You change.
People change and so do the landscapes of the places we used to know when we were younger. Life fades and so can memory, unless we nurture them.

Of all things said to a loved one, one of the most popular questions is asked almost like a statement. This happens when something is wrong, only we didn’t know about it until something unfortunate happened and then we ask, “Well, why didn’t you tell me?”