“We did not sense at first the extra time bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath the skin.” 

In The Age of Miracles, “the slowing” is the catastrophic natural phenomenon in which Earth decelerates. This excerpt implies that “the slowing” does not happen overnight. The narrator equates the progression of “the slowing” to the development of an unknown tumor, which indicates that enormous changes begin gradually.

“There was no footage to show on television, no burning buildings or broken bridges, no twisted metal or scorched earth, no houses sliding off slabs. No one was wounded. No one was dead. It was, at the beginning, a quite invisible catastrophe.” 

Some of the most insidious pains develop slowly and over time, like a tumor. Walker sets the stage to draw parallels between “the slowing” and other more mundane life crises that occur over time: the possible dissolution of a marriage, the ending of a friendship, and the slow-build that leads to adolescence. 

“Later, I would come to think of those first days as the time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and swine flu and killer bees. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end.” 

The narrator’s commentary on modern life, which runs throughout the book, is apparent in this passage. Julia notes how humanity historically focuses on the tangible events, yet the end of life on Earth transpires slowly and beyond immediate detection.