There's no way to escape the riptide of time

There are lots of analogies for the passage of time. Time flies. It races. Sometimes it stands still.

Lately, though, the only metaphor that keeps coming to my mind is that time is a riptide, pulling me under, pushing me along and rushing by all at the same time.

I felt the full force of this rapid time current this week as my oldest daughter trudged up the hill to her first day of preschool.

She shed a few tears as the teacher welcomed her to school, but probably not as many as I cried while walking back down the hill to my car. I lost it again when I walked back into an empty house.

It was odd not to hear her voice or the clang of Legos on the tile. Just silence.

I couldn't help but ponder the three and a half years that have passed since Nicole was born. The days seemed so long, but the years now seem so short.

And now I'm passing her off to a woman with a construction paper name tag shaped like an apple that says "Mrs. Hall."

As I did, I knew we were starting a new era in my daughter's life and in my relationship with her.

I won't be there to see everything she sees, hear what other kids tell her or be her source of knowledge on just about everything. She'll have a part of her life that doesn't include me.

She'll slowly start to learn that she doesn't need me by her side every second. She'll learn to rely on herself, make her own friends and have her own experiences. She won't cry when we part at the preschool door.

I want all those things for her. I knew they were coming, but I just didn't think they'd come so soon. I felt the same way as I boxed up newborn clothes this week that my newest daughter, Anne, has already outgrown.

So this week I've felt the full force of this riptide of time. Suddenly it's moving so hard and so fast that I can't even catch my breath.

The funny thing about riptides is that the more you struggle against the current, the more likely you are to get trapped. You'll simply exhaust yourself trying to escape and get sucked out to sea anyway.

You can't fight it. You can't control it. And you definitely can't stop it.

One of the only ways to escape a riptide is to go with it. Just relax and let the current take you out until you can swim across it.