Her mother used to tell her that when she was born, she came out crawling and within an hour she was running laps around the nurses.
As she grew up the grass was always greener, tomorrow. At five years old she imagined herself trying on ten years. As a twelve year old she daydreamed about how sixteen would look on her. On her eighteenth birthday she was planning her twenty-fifth. Her closet was filled with old calendars whose boxes were all crossed out. Her life was a countdown, but it was never fast enough for her.
She fell in love at ninety miles per hour. Head over heels, heels over head, her heart was his. First date, first kiss, first year all in one blink of her eye. Down on one knee, tiny black box, rings over fingers, ‘I dos’ slipping over lips. Ten months later— twins. As she held the two tiny babies in her arms something stirred deep within her. Their small, young eyes squinted into hers and for the first time, she felt old. Their life of one week was a second to her thirty years. But she didn’t have time to feel old. There were diapers to change and beds to make and clothes to wash.
Their first birthday was just days before their eighth Christmas and they were getting their permits on the eve of their high school graduation. Her babies were both now taller than her and she dropped them off at college the same day she watched her daughter walk down the aisle. Funny, it was just last month she had said her own vows. Two hours later she was greeting her son’s fiancee into her home and in five minutes (was it really five? she could have sworn it was two) she was a grandmother.
Aches grew in places she had never known to ache and with each second that passed a new wrinkle appeared upon her face. Her clothes grew tight around her middle and her skin grew loose everywhere. Her husband’s hair grew thin right before her and she woke up to gray strands falling in her eyes. Oh. Her eyes. Last time she went to the eye doctor she had 20/20 vision and now she could barely read the cereal box. That visit was just on Monday, right?
Her grandchildren visited her, two were already married, one had kids. She watched her great-grandchildren sit, crawl, stand, walk, and run all at once. 
She and her husband kissed on their sixtieth wedding anniversary and in the same breath she watched as they lowered him into the ground. She vaguely felt hands and arms around her but she knew nothing in the only moment her life stood still. When she looked up she was in a room that was not hers, laying in a bed that was not hers, looking at a clock that was not hers. Her babies had said they would visit her in the nursing home. How long ago was that? Five minutes? Five months? Five years?
All of a sudden she is out of breath and it is all going too fast. That feeling she felt all those years ago when she first held her newborn twins is growing. She can feel it deep in her bones, She is old. She is as ancient as the sky. She is rooted deep within the core of the Earth and she can feel how fast they’re all going. She’s speeding through empty space at one thousand miles per hour, going... going... going.
No longer is she looking forward, she’s on a train facing backwards as it all flies past her. Before it was a never-ending tightrope and she was desperate to make it to the finish line. She used to sprint down it, wanting to be faster, further, older. It always looked so long, but what she didn’t know was where she saw the rope melt into the horizon was really where it rolled over a hill and right over that hill was the end. Now she’s almost at the finish line. Looking back she sees the rope is barely a thread, so much shorter than she had thought. She is moving backwards, as slow as she can, but it’s still too fast. The years that once seemed like mountains are now falling through her hands like sand. The sand drops into an hourglass, but it’s all slipping through too fast.  All of it. One big rush. One single breath. Did she even blink once? Now the hour glass is slowing down, the sand trickling little by little. The sand turns black, ashes. Her ashes. She is becoming dust once more. The thread itself is dissolving in front of her and she finally sees herself as she is now, too old and too late.
Wasn’t it just yesterday she was learning to walk? 
She hears a laugh and right before her is her ten year old self, running, always running, wishing to be older, wishing to be anything but ten. The last of the ashes fall and the hourglass grows silent.