A week ago tonight, I was trying to maneuver four layers of blue felt under the presser-foot of my sewing machine. I was trying to reinforce the costume wings for the boys' Halloween parade at nursery school. Life lately, it takes a lot more time for things to soak in. As I write this, at the same place where I spent too many hours cutting felt and re-threading my machine, I am confronted by the way time passes. I know that next year, Manny and Nici will probably want the store-bought, polyester superhero costumes with the enhanced pectoral muscles. I have to admit that the costume pattern I used was originally designed for an infant and I look at Manny in the picture and I can see that. Next to his friends at school who went as "Dark Vader" and Batman, I could see that he is at a crossroads. I was looking at my boy who is no longer the chubby-handed baby mouthing my nose or the tenderfooted toddler trying to keep pace with me. These days, he is a brooding drummer who requests certain CD's by singing a line pitch-perfectly. He likes to eat with knife and fork just like his Dad and asks to be excused from the table when he's through. And yesterday, wanted to be sure that the pediatrician was not going to trick him when administering his flu shot. Maybe this doesn't make sense to you but I am grieving his babyhood. I'm definitely a one-infant-at-a-time kind of girl, don't get me wrong-- but I guess I am realizing that I made those costumes with this hope in the back of my mind. Feeling time's crazy passage and hoping briefly, even for the littlest moment, that I could keep him from flying away.