Remembering When

It was a wonderful present I received for my eighth birthday. I turned the pages as quickly as I could in the flipbook with the outline of a running figure, each page showing him in a slightly advanced position. A moving picture magically emerged with each flick. In less than half a minute and one hundred actions later, I had watched the running of a marathon. And so it is in the years that have passed. The eternity of waiting to become a schoolgirl, the eon preceding graduation, the century of a pregnancy-all the experiences and what I learned from them flash by as quickly as the pages in that book.