Melted Candles, Birthday Cake, and Ticking Clocks

You're writing an exam, but all you can do is keep looking at the clock, acutely aware of just how quickly its hands are moving. You feel the dread build up in you, and, when you finally look up, you're in disbelief: There is just no way that this much time has gone by. You try to focus, but your attention is consumed by the unforgiving device on the wall. Which, you know—makes it hard to focus on what really matters. And that's how life goes, it seems.

On the morning of my eleventh birthday, I woke up crying. Not a fit, a tantrum, or a whim. I wasn't prone to those, anyway. This was a truly heartfelt cry. I had just realized I would no longer be able to simply hold out my hands when people asked me how old I was—my fingers would no longer suffice. My age would no longer be the perfect, round number that it had been up till the night before. I was no longer ten. But it wasn't these things in themselves that inflicted upon me a profound sense of change, of loss, of growth: It was my sudden realization that life could only ever move in one direction, and that it was—constantly—moving in that direction, whether we wanted it to or not. There was nothing we could do to stop it. We would never be able to relive the past. I would never, ever, be ten again. For my newly eleven-year-old heart, this cry had been the saddest one yet.

I was only seven here, but that plastic bundle of joy is Lucía, my loyal sidekick since I was two. She never spoke much, but her familiar face was a comforting presence on the day I turned eleven.

I remember the look of concern on my mom's face when she walked into my soft-pink room to find me curled up in bed, eyes welled up, tightly holding onto my adored baby doll Lucía (the one and only) and my cherished plush Winnie the Pooh. My seamless stream of tears had turned my face red, and my words—blurted out between sobs and snot—weren't making a whole lot of sense. She didn't know what had happened, or why I was so sad: It was my birthday—shouldn't I be happy?

And so I tried to explain, in whatever level of logic I could muster, the paralyzing fear that I felt at my sudden realization that time was unstoppable, growing up inevitable, and change a certainty. I remember pleading with my mom (like she had a say in the matter): "I don't want to be eleven." Perhaps, I thought, if I implored enough, I could stay ten forever and nothing would ever change.

But change, it did.

I don't remember exactly what my mother told me, though it involved a list of reasons why being eleven was going to be great and fun and exciting. While I did stop crying and started getting ready for the day (a warm Saturday with a sunny sky unwilling to let go of summer just yet), the truth is that I didn't feel any less sad. A gaping hole had made its way into my stomach. I could feel my childhood slipping away from me, and I was powerless to stop it. I wasn't interested in the world of grown-ups, nor was I keen on the change that was about to ensue as a result of, eventually, becoming one.

I had just begun Grade 6 that week—my second-last year of elementary school. I loved my school, and was cognizant of how little time there was left of that chapter in my life. We had begun to plan our Grade 7 graduation trip—for my classmates and me, it was the end of an era. And, on the day I turned eleven, I could suddenly sense the speed at which things were changing. And I desperately wanted to slow. it. all. down.

As was the custom on every birthday, my friends and family would come to my house for a lively get-together, dinner, and, of course, cake—my mom’s famous Chocotorta, a scrumptious combination of chocolate cookies dipped in coffee and layered between copious amounts of dulce de leche. For all the sadness I felt at realizing I was one year closer to adulthood, I found a silver lining in knowing I'd get to eat Chocotorta.

The decorations on the Chocotorta were, pun intended, the icing on the cake—except my mother never actually used icing, but a rich chocolate ganache gracefully decorated with sprinkles, M&Ms, and other colourful toppings. From fantastical theme parks, to soccer fields with teams hard at play, to Garfield characters, to recreations of Winnie the Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood, my mom's cakes and their three-dimensional designs have always been works of art, made in the wee hours the night before, after an impossibly long day at work, and with an unparalleled sense of love.

The second the lights were dimmed, I knew that my mother would be coming out of the kitchen holding her creation of art—and I was suddenly entranced. Totally captivated by the smell of brightly lit candles beginning to melt, the whiff of chocolate and dulce de leche filling the dining room, and the anticipation of a "Feliz cumpleaños" sung with feeling and in a cacophonous medley of timbres. And on the day I turned eleven, as I blew out the candles surrounded by my grandparents, family, and friends, I forgot, for an instant, about the preemptive nostalgia that had occupied my mind earlier that day. In that moment, everything was perfect.

But the moment passed, the party ended, and my apprehension for the speed at which time moves made a reappearance. It nested my brain, where it found a cozy little home. And it never quite... left.

On every birthday that followed, the feeling that everything was moving too fast would come back to greet me without fail. The older I got, the more aware I became of how fleeting moments really are. Even blowing out the candles—the same ritual that, as a child, had allowed me to temporarily escape into pure bliss—became marred by the inescapability of time.

It would seem as though, the older I get, the faster time moves. And the older I've gotten, the more I've wanted—needed—for this train to slow down. I can feel it accelerating at every turn, and I often find myself wanting to "freeze the picture." To look at the clock without the dread that its hands will keep moving in one direction, and in that direction only, inevitably, and for all time.

Yet, as I've gotten older, I've come to realize that this desire to freeze time may have kept me, on more than one occasion, from actually being present in the very moments I wished to freeze. And I don't want to, one day, wake up and realize that I've been so preoccupied with the speed of life that I forgot to actually live it.

Because, yes—time will always be unstoppable, growing older will always be inevitable, and change will always be a certainty. Life is always moving forward, no matter our take on the matter. Birthday candles melt, parties end, and time plays tricks on us. But, perhaps, precisely therein lies the beauty of life: In the very knowledge that moments don't last forever. Perhaps, that is all the more reason to slow down, forget about the clock for a minute (yes, another pun), and simply be. Because, even if this train is moving faster than I would like it to, does that mean I shouldn't still enjoy the ride?