Inches

Almost everything can be measured in inches; hair, shoes, carpets, even cars can be measured in inches. Sometimes time can be measured in inches, "I was an inch away from swatting you!" Even love can be measured in inches, "I love you this much (arms spread wide)!" I always thought inches were a consistent measuring tool.

Today, time, love, and my children came together and were all measured in inches. We measured my two youngest children at the doctor's office. How can a ten-year-old be 59.5 inches tall? How can an eight-year-old be 57.5 inches tall? My 21 year old called after we left the doctor's office and he wondered, "How can my brother accomplish in 10 years what it took me 15 to accomplish?"

I like to say that I'm 62.5 inches tall, but that's not exactly true. I'm not sure if I embellished for so many years that I believed it myself, or if I've shrunk, but I am now only about 61 inches tall, which means that my ten-year-old is only 2 inches behind me and I have 33 years on him. This seems very unfair.

At the end of the day, when I tell my boys how much I love them, more than the sun and the moon and the stars, I realize that the inches used to measure my love for them must be far greater than the inches used to measure our height.