Marking the Years

I mark the years by two milestones. The day my sprinkler system is drained and the day I have my taxes done. I see the two men who provide these services once a year. Somehow the years are flying by faster and faster. As each one arrives, we say the same thing. "Wow, can you believe it's been another year?" These men started coming to my house when my children were babies. They watched them go from high chairs to husbands. They have seen a golden retriever brought into the house as a puppy and put to sleep fourteen years later. They now see Shelby growing. The funny thing is that we never see the changes in ourselves. I still have the frame of mind that these men are thirty years old and I am in my twenties.