the passing of time

the passing of time

I’m finding that babies and gardens are what remind me of time passing.

A month ago, our garden box was organized rows of little seedlings and in just a few short weeks, it is now an explosion of towering sunflowers, bolted bok choy and a gigantic cucumber vine growing up the tomato stems.

Noah turns 1 tomorrow and going over the photos and videos that made up his year 1 brought back memories of things I had forgotten.

The way he would coo and flap his hands at 3 months, the season of losing his hair at 4 months, the days he just lay on the changing table.

It’s strange how time seemed to pass so slowly, the minutes stretching on before he could go down for his next nap, and now looking back, it seems like time had accelerated, bringing about so much change in the short span of a year.

I went back to my McGill lab office yesterday and my things were just as I had left it a year ago.

My half-used chapstick horizontal near my pile of old lab notebooks.

My collection of inspirational quotes, comics and photos still hanging from Dollarama magnetic clips.

My desk neighbor, Jesse, with his masala tea and Sikh turban, peering at magnified images of metals on his computer.

The microwave that predated me still splattered with dots of dried curry.

The only thing changed was the tomato seedling by our windowsill that was now a dead, shrivelled stump.

Time is a strange thing.


I am going back to a life I have forgotten, the muscle memory slowly coming back as I start my rituals of rinsing glassware, snapping on my latex gloves, scrawling today’s date on the top right hand corner of my lab notebook.

It feels familiar and I am grateful for that.

The baby is now down for a nap, and I need to get back to making graphs on PRISM, tweaking color schemes on figures.

But I thought I would first jot down some thoughts on returning to lab this week and how it has made me think about the passing of time.

P.S. Future posts will most likely be more short thoughts rather than longform, given me straddling motherhood and PhD.


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