is 2,000 a lot?

if you had 2,000 pennies, you'd probably say no. but if you had 2,000 mice in your basement you'd probably say yes, it is a mighty lot, a near unfathomable lot.

how about 2,000 days left to have your child live in your home as part of your in-home family? is 2,000 a lot then? that is the question i'm asking myself because this last saturday my bella countdown hit 2,000 days (ref). i still remember when i originally shared the timer with everyone, there were more than 2,600 hundred days showing, 2,601 to be precise. that, at the time, and now, felt like a lot. but--and here's the really, really terrifying bit of the tale--it feels like i made that post months ago, and certainly not like 601 days ago.

people say time is fleeting. if you think on this word 'fleeting' it sounds good and right when fancifully speaking about time. it sounds like it works to capture the desperate nature of that linear passage of moments that flash before us but i fear it is too clean, too passive, to accurately describe what is occurring. this time we are gifted pours in a heavy stream from a cosmic faucet that never turns off, relents, or stutters. when we are engaged, our hands are in the water drawing large handfuls of its sustenance to our mouth and when we are not paying attention, we loose sense of the falling stream altogether, not even hearing it crest before it falls past us, never to offer us those particular beads again.

on my recent ski trip with bookguy, an opportunity for me to travel abroad came up in our conversations. after he excitedly reacted to my chance to visit the foreign place i shrugged it off saying i planned to send my junior colleague. bookguy, the man of the world who has visited many continents, was dumbfounded at my position and decision to pass up a chance to visit such a wondrous destination. after some faltering attempts to answer the question, i finally found the right answer for me saying the only foreign place i'm interested in visiting is the place that can give me more minutes in my day. and i find in most my travels i wind up getting less from my days than more so visiting strange places for the sake of visiting them or saying i'd visited them actually deprives me of the growth and experience i am so methodically chasing.

to return to the question at hand though: is 2,000 a lot? our seven-year old anthony believes 2,000 pennies are a lot of pennies and, he believes 2,000 mice are not too many but almost just enough mice. as for where i stand, i'm torn between finding the number simultaneously generous and paltry. if given a moment to collect myself, my mature answer is i'm thankful for the days i've gotten thus far with my child as well as the days that lie ahead. my honest answer is i'm terrified at how fast those last 600 hundred days just went by and that my countdown will reach 3 then 2 then 1 before, as the parental veterans like to say, i know it. in defense i'm working hard to, as they also say, make sure i leave it all on the field of play and not have any regrets about what i did or didn't do with my shot in the game. i believe that is the only way to retire content, sated, and ready to leave the field.