The wings of, and wrinkles in, our friend Time

I spend entirely too much time in the pointless and, don't worry, I've noticed, paradoxical, consideration of the fleeting nature of time. And then today I read a theory about the three phases of life in Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, Lacuna, and I'm simply slain.

 Her book, which (it goes without saying) is incredible, is the story of a young writer growing up through the Great Depression and the Great War and the Red Scare, not a true citizen of either his father's homeland nor his mother's but a son and inhabitant of literature, of words and their power.

 Anywhat.

 It touched me, his description of his mother's view that in the first phase of our life we are children. In the second phase we have children. And then? The third phase and the final curtain.

It was hardly the point of her beautiful book. But it stuck with me. Here I am, with one child entering her beautiful teens and my youngest just teetering on the edge of babyhood and the rest of them truly giving me a run for my money every day of the week and I think: I don't want to miss this phase nor any of the next.

Do you write every day? Every week? Do you take pictures as though the event will not have happened if you aren't recording it digitally? How do you live in this phase, whatever phase you enjoy now?