As the colors of autumn start to appear, a tinge of red, orange, or yellow appearing here and there, almost unnoticed, I can feel the clock ticking. It’s a steady rhythm in the back of my head--tick, tock, tick, tock—reminding me that my youth is slipping away. Over the years time seemed to move so slowly. Five seemed to last forever, six also an eternity, seven just a little bit faster, and so on until now I’m seventeen. I’m young, but compared to what I was, I am old. I used to wish that the clock would move faster, that the days would whiz by, and the years come and go as suddenly as the rain that hovers overhead today, an occasional outburst pouring from the clouds only to cease in an instant, and the ground suddenly dry up beneath my feet. I do not wish that anymore.

Time moves too fast. It seems only days ago that I planted the garden, but now it is overgrown with weeds, the flowers blooming, tall, strong, flowering with a splendor that it seems only days ago I was merely dreaming of. Wasn’t it just yesterday that my elder sister and I played outside, and I dreamt of being a teenager? We used to daydream about the day we would go to college, and every time I thought about it, my heart would well up with joy and sorrow to think that she would go before me and that I would have to wait at home and miss her from a distance. Could it have been so many years ago that my brothers and younger sister were so small that I could hold them, play with toy trucks and baby toys that are gentle enough for little hands? But now we are older. I started college today. In a few short months I turn eighteen—no longer a child.

I still dream of some of the things I did when I was small—traveling, meeting different people, and seeing different places. And now it is so close. Can it be that on my eighteenth birthday, or maybe a few days following, I will board a plane and fly off to some far off place for weeks? Can it be that I will finally be the woman I dreamed of being as a little girl?

I used to wish that time would move faster, but now I wish that it would slow. If only I could stop it—freeze time—if only for a moment.

“Please. Stop,” I want to whisper.

So I can catch my breath and say good-bye before all of this is gone.

But the clock keeps ticking. Tick, tock, tick, tock.