Who are you, thief of time??  We grow older but we do not mark the years. We pass inexorably along the paths of our lives, not seeing the markers yet they are there. They hide like milestones hidden in long grass unseen as we hurry by but they see us.  And as the hands of the clock turn without us seeing the hours we feel the marks, our children grow and grow up and move on and yet we think we are the same but the dustbin seems to feel heavier and as we set it down we put a hand to our back and remember how dad used to do that. Do you remember how we thought that summer would last for ever? And then one day we walked through a field and when we got home we found our shoes wet with dew. Not long now and we will have to find that scarf we wore last year, for the mists of autumn are upon us, and so it is with our lives.

I look at my hands as I work and see my father's hands. How did that happen?? I feel no different and yet the working day seems to take longer to end than it did. I saw my father too infrequently in my life and when  I saw him again after a few years he had grown older, yet I have not .... or have I?? He was shorter somehow and those strong arms which lifted me high as a child now seemed so frail. But then I look into his eyes and he is as he always was  and so it is with me  and you. We do not feel older, though our bodies do. Our lives have changed but not the ones who do the living. I no longer see old people, I  see older  frames and then I realise that our later years do not change us inside. When we meet it is like a gathering of the Veteran Car Club, we talk to the drivers not the cars.

This I promise you, that should we ever meet I will see the you inside... the one that batted third or the girl who wore the white dress at that wedding in the village church.  I know you are there inside, I see it in your eyes.