Do You ever get used to such a place?

I just started reading Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence which I'm sure I read years ago, yet it all seems brand new. Perhaps when I read it I was too young and immature to understand it. Now, as you all know, I am old and wise. The breadth of my comprehension is unfathomable. Ha Ha Ha. I seriously hope you know I am joking when I say that. Of course I am still young and immature, just with perhaps a bit more knowledge than I had the day before and the day before...

Anyways, I just read this passage, where an elderly Hagar Shipley is in a retirement home that her son and daughter in law are hoping to convince her to move into. She has just met one of the residents of the retirement home:

"Do you--" I hesitate. "Do you ever get used to such a place?"

She laughs then, a short bitter laugh I recognize and comprehend at once.

"Do you get used to life?" She says. "Can you answer me that? It all comes as a surprise. You get your first period, and you're amazed --I can have babies now--such a thing! When the children come, you think --Is it mine? Did it come out of me? Who could believe it? When you can't have them anymore, what a shock --It's finished --so soon?"

This passage really struck me. Perhaps it is the passage of time that I am being hit with, how quickly we move from adolescense to womanhood. How so often we rush ourselves through these stages in our lives. We are so anxious to see the next sequence of our life unfold that we don't stop often enough to cherish today. And no, I have not gotten used to any of it. It seems that just as you start to comprehend one stage of your life you have already moved onto the next, which is perhaps one of the reasons I am cherishing Eli so much. It is a chance for me to embrace motherhood without being overcome by the newness of it.