A skateboard and the sound of life passing before your eyes

This morning the first thing I heard (after my alarm clock) was the sound of someone skateboarding past my house. I immediately thought about being twelve again; where skateboarding was my biggest priority for the day. I have never really wanted to go back in time to repeat those glorious days of childhood. I wasn't popular. I didn't stand out. I just wanted to get by - grow up and move somewhere I could fit in.
Today, for the first time, I wished I could go back to the summer I was twelve. Each moment was so important, and I didn't even know it. Every opportunity to learn something new was excruciating for me, now I would be happy to soak it in.

As the sound of the skateboard drifed off, so did my thoughts. I thought about my fourteen year old daughter and how lucky she is to have her entire life ahead of her. I thought about how each day forward will be one step closer to her being "grown up" and someplace else. I realized every moment - every opportunity I have had to teach her something will soon come to the point where world meets history and she will take all the knowledge I have tried to share and move out on her own. I realized how little time I have left to impress all the good things, before she takes them into the world and makes them her own.

To be fourteen and have the world at your fingertips. College choices, and travel; boys and friendships; career choices and concepts - the world is a fresh place...when you are fourteen. When you are forty-one, life is not so fresh. Choices are no longer so easy. Every decision is based on a process which includes at least three other people, a community restriction, and likely a schedule change. I know the choices I have made in the past were all based on freedoms - the choices I make now are all based on restrictions. The wheels of a skateboard propel the wheels in my head as I realize every step I have made in the past has led me to the steps I am no longer able to make in the present.

Now, how do I take the proper steps to take my future back to where I saw it in the first place? Are we able to out-think ourselves and become wiser based on recognition? We certainly can't backtrack.
Make every step count.