My daughter Tammie cheerfully announced, “Our cruise ship will be leaving the dock in seven days, eight hours and thirteen minutes.” Looking down at the cruise ship’s navigator app in her phone, she questioned, “Have you looked at the dining room menu? What would you order if you were on the ship today?”

I complained, “The closer we get to leaving for the cruise, the more anxious I feel. I feel like a child waiting for Christmas Eve and Santa’s visit.”

“That’s wonderful, isn’t it?” exclaimed my daughter, like a true high school cheerleader.

Frowning, I slowly shook my head no and explained, “When you and your sister were little, the last few days before Christmas was painful. Your anticipation and hopes made you emotional, anxious little people, which made me feel sad. The holiday was supposed to be fun. Instead, you wished away all the days and the fun things we could do leading up to Christmas. You just wanted that one day to arrive.”

Holding up her phone for me see the screen, Tammie asked, “Doesn’t looking at the navigator app make you think about the fun things we will get to do, to see, to experience?”

I insisted, “The app does make me think about all those things, but since I can’t do them until we get to the ship, I feel like I am spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. I feel like I am wishing my life away.”

The phrase, ‘wishing my life away’ made me think of my mother. When I was in third grade one evening before Christmas, I lamented to my mother how I didn’t like waiting for Christmas Eve and wished it would hurry up and come. My fifty-five-year-old mother’s sage advice was, “Don’t wish your life away.”

Although I was young, I understood Mom to be saying that if I had the power to speed up time to quickly bring on all the special dates I looked forward to, my life would pass too quickly.

Fifteen years passed after Mom admonished me about wishing my life away before I finally realized there was a deeper meaning to what Mom said. One day I went for a walk on one of my days off from work. Living in the country, I walked along farm fields that surrounded my house.

The gorgeous June afternoon led me to walk further than I intended. When I turned around, I wished I could be instantly teleported back to the house like in Star Trek, because I was tired.

At the time I was reading a book about angels, and how they can instantly appear wherever they wish. Pulling a timothy head from a nearby clump of grass, I stared at my distant house. I clearly wasn’t an angel, so with a sigh of resignation, I began to slowly plod towards home.

A cool gust of wind made me stop and notice the field I was walking past. The breeze made the tall grass dip and sway like waves on water. Blue wildflowers grew in clumps next to a pile of rocks along the fenceline. I stopped to pick some. Further on, I discovered blossoming yellow mustard to add to my bouquet. Near a ditch, red-winged black birds swooped overhead and frantically scolded me to warn that I was too close to their nest. While admiring a fat, green caterpillar, I looked up and suddenly realized I was close to home.

Tammie had been studying the navigator app on her phone while I was thinking about what I had learned since Mom had told me not to wish my life away. I described the countryside walk I took when I was in my twenties and explained, “Although I was tired, I enjoyed the things I experienced on the way home. Had I been able to instantly wish myself home, I would have missed hearing the calls of a brown thrasher, seeing butterflies and smelling sweet, fresh-cut alfalfa as it dried.”  I concluded, “The most enjoyable parts of life are often the things that happen between highly anticipated experiences.”