A Time of Innocence

A young surfer was caught in a riptide and disappeared a few days before Easter. As fog rolled in at Poplar Beach, search and rescue efforts failed. Friends and family kept vigil on the beach for days, and mourned. Today, he may have been found. Or maybe it is someone else? RIP young man from Hayward.

https://twitter.com/SMCSheriff/status/1122601601565380609

We sort of know that our days are somehow numbered. But how, exactly?

No one really knows, not even those good with numbers can figure out how to count the time to the inscrutable end of a human life. That calculation has always been impossible.

Which reminds me of a question that recently came to me. How does a child develop a sense of time?  I imagine there are many good studies about this, so I must do some searching. Right now my questions are rather specific, and prompted by observing little kids in first and third grades. The ones I know are just learning how to tell time. As yet, they do not care much about that. Except in a very utilitarian way, eg to know when their after school tutored reading session will end. And once it is ended, they simply pick up and go on to the next thing. Not even a slightly ceremonial or reluctant or gleeful goodbye! Why is that? When does that change?

At what point does the question change from “Are we there yet?” to something else?

Parents and teachers and child psychologists probably know the answer.  For me, this innocence about time is still a mystery. And so is the beautiful time of innocence I witnessed this morning in the children making their First Communion at my local parish. I hoped they would remember this day far into their futures, as I have.

But my questions remain about time and when, or how, or what happens to develop a sense of future time.  The tabula rasa changes, and that seems like a mysterious process to me.

Innocence of time within a time of innocence. Is it possible to lose neither? Or maybe we can only hope to recapture both if we wipe the slate clean of each piece of evil.