Pumpkin asked me the other day, as I reminded her of the time for the fifth time that morning, why “grownups always lie about the time.” I stopped dead in my nagging tracks. “What do you mean?” “Well,” she started slowly explaining, “you said it was already 7:15 and it’s only 7:11. And you always do that. It’s like when you told me I had to start doing things for myself because I was 7 before I even turned 7.” Talk about an early morning gut-check. Why do grownups do that? Why do I do that? She, of course, in her complete innocence, didn’t realize the profound questions she was making me ask myself. Billy Joel’s “Vienna” starts playing in my head – a song that I often here in my states of over-stressed melancholy - reminding me to "slow down, you crazy child." Here I am still reeling from the fact that she did actually turn 7 just two weeks ago and I spend so much time and energy hurrying her – hurrying them both – worried about the next appointment, the next eve...