Time is a melting snowman

Czas plynie, in Polish. Time flies. I learned it from the Polish-Portuguese dictionary I was using in the seniors home we used to visit as part of our voluntary work. It was a good dictionary. It included sayings and expressions that used common words. I was trying to communicate with a lady, and it sounded that she said something related to time, czas. I looked it up, and I saw the expression, I said it, with my beginner pronunciation, czas plynie, and with some knowledge of elderly slang, acquired by spending a lot of time with my wise and light-hearted great-grandmother, who was 103 years old when she died. 

Czas plynie, I said, and Pani Maria (I think she was called Maria) understood me! She smiled, impressed, repeated it, czas plynie, added no, tak!... yes, indeed! and said a few more words which I couldn't follow, as didn't recognize the sounds enough to look them up. But in that fleeting moment, we understood each other, sharing that wise saying about the quick passage of time. Me, 22 years old, living abroad for the first time. She, maybe late 70s, spending the last years, or decades, of her life, in a senior's home, not far from the city centre.

Czas plynie.

When, looking out of your window, you see the pink whispers of clouds painted by the setting sun, and a minute later, they are not there anymore. 

When the only thing left from the whole street covered with snow is a slowly retreating white circle in the grass. 

When a grandpa passes away, after 96 years of anchoring your family. 

Czas plynie.

But it is worth it. 

Like when a small family of mini-mushrooms greets you from within the midst of a forest of mosses, living on the bark of a street oak.