At six I’m all revved up to go out shopping — but no one else is. By eight I’m not revved to shop or to do anything. What applies at six doesn’t apply at eight.

We get to the supermarket late. The lines are building. Ten per register two to three carts a person. Erev Pesach madness at midnight in Jerusalem. People are leaving carts in lines and going home. “I really don’t think I’m going to make it” I say feeling like our turn just won’t ever happen. Yet I know that in three days there won’t even be a line and no one’s going to argue over the last box of fifty-shekel shmurah matzoh meal let alone look at one.

What I see with my own eyes is that if a person waits long enough everything passes.

This is the beauty of time.

I have a friend who always says “If I leave a shirt that just needs a button long enough in the sewing box the person will eventually grow out of it and I won’t need to sew buttons any more.

This is also the beauty of time.

For so many years I cried “I can’t … This one will never do this and that one will never be that …”

I couldn’t and cannot fix it all — everyone everything anything.

And the years pass and everyone grows up and everyone somehow learns to walk to read to write to speak and to answer.

But we get into these straits where we think we can’t not another second. And then it passes and it’s okay — or it isn’t okay but it’s really still okay because it’s what Hashem wants. 

Another dimension to the beauty of time.

Sometimes it happens when you least expect. A word hits where it wasn't aimed. It wasn’t meant to hurt. Like “Did you take my shirt to the cleaners?” But since you’ve been on your feet all day and the baby screamed all night somehow the words knocks right into the funny bone in your heart and it hurts mostly because of the suprise.

Emotions fly.

You say things you didn’t ever plan or want to say because it caught you off guard.

There you are — left standing alone with a truckload of pain trying to figure out how you’re ever going to pass through this bottle-necked bridge.

Then a few hours go by — sometimes even a day — and some things start to open up and once again the pain is able to pass.

This is the beauty of time..

The kitchen’s looking at me each cabinet with its own agenda calling “Clean me first.” The pages on the table calling “deadline.” Everyone’s calling “hungry”

What I couldn’t do yesterday because of fatigue confidence or desire I somehow do today without flinching with renewed strength in a new days light. Again the beauty of time.

I see a mother weeks after birth after all the fears and prayers and heaviness and she’s running down the street light as a bird pushing a baby carriage to catch a bus. I think to myself How it all passes. And this is the beauty of time.

Then I see our neighbor’s father who was full of vitality and spirit just months ago holding a cane and barely able to lift his own feet. I think how it all passes so fast. 

And how this also is a part of the beauty of time.

Every year at the same time I write an article before Pesach that appears after Pesach And it’s always a challenge because I’m really hoping and praying that we won’t need this one because what applied before Pesach won’t apply after Pesach.

Because we’ll have grown to a different place and the “shirt” won’t fit anymore and we won’t have to mend anything or sew any more buttons. 

This is the beauty of time.