Dear Friend,
I wanted to send you something small and true from the edge of an ordinary evening.
My three grandchildren were out in the cul-de-sac tonight, turning a quiet stretch of pavement into something larger than it has any right to be. One was chasing, one was laughing, and one kept changing the rules as if the world had always worked that way. For a little while, it did.
They ran like time has not yet learned their names. Like the road was poured just for them and will never crack.
I stood off to the side, not wanting to interrupt what felt like a kind of perfection you only recognize when you are no longer inside it. The light leaned west the way it always does, slow and certain, but they did not notice. They only knew the game, the moment, the sound of being alive without measure.
And I realized something I think we spend most of our lives circling around.
They do not know these are the best days of their lives.
They do not know how quickly the light begins to move faster. They do not know how memory grows heavier than anything you can carry in your hands. They do not know that one day they will stand where I stood, watching something just as beautiful and wishing, quietly, for one more afternoon inside it.
But maybe that is the design of it.
Maybe the only way to truly live a moment is not to know its value while you are in it.
Still, standing there, I felt a kind of wealth a man does not earn so much as he is allowed to witness. Time without edges. Laughter without reason. A road that, for a brief and shining hour, belongs entirely to those who believe it does.
I did not call them in right away.
Some things deserve a few extra minutes.
If you have something like that near you, I hope you let it run a little longer tonight.
Write soon,
Stephen Ango Oliver
ThePostmarkClub.com
Gently Comes Time
They run like time
has not yet found them,
laughter bright
and gone too soon.
I stand at the edge,
knowing what they don’t…
how fast it all goes.
But they know this moment,
and that is enough.
I just watch them run,
and hope time comes gently.
-SAO March 24, 2026