About Time
Between birth and death, there’s a lot of time to fill. Never enough, but more than is imaginable. Half centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, hours, seconds ticking on into the other. When you’re lucky.
It takes a lot to sustain life on this precarious human anthill we call, Earth, but if you’re really fortunate, born in the right time to parents who got there on the backs of their forepeople, or you’ve worked hard enough, or tripped over good fortune, you get some downtime.
I’ve had large chunks of swallowed days a childhood summer long while it was elapsing, but as I watch my son pull off the driveway and away, I know it went like a leisurely brunch — enjoyable, but way too finite.
Listing countless regrets to yourself like a mantra may not be your idea of a good time, but I liked it. It soothed me until I realized what a waste of energy it was. With the help of meditation, therapy and surrender to inevitable sorrow, I dragged myself off that hamster wheel.
I wish I’d let go in time to focus less on what I lacked, and more on what I loved. But the absence of obsessive thinking has left me with a lot of time on my hands.
I’ve slogged through wasted time, squandering ample opportunity to go up to bat on a career I prefer to hide in the dugout for, avoiding the home run, more interested in rearranging towels. Time relentlessly tries to get you to lose everything to a moment. But even nine innings end. Eventually.
Marriage has taken up nearly half my life. It’s a place I seek solace in. Over and over again. On endless, smiling repeat. What do you feel like for dinner? Or Do you think the boys are ok? Though the maintenance can prove tricky, it’s been time well spent.
I have lost years to other people’s fiction. I am, have been, and always will be, looking for a good story. And I’ll buy it if it’s compelling, help you shape it even. Veracity is not a requirement, only a request.
My father, the playwright, used to say he preferred to spend his time where he was in control of the dialogue. And the action. So I decided to spin my own words into worlds, though I’m tragically attracted to pain even there. No happy endings for me. Yet.
The years spent as a driver for two wonderful children with endless sports/academic/social obligations paid ridiculous dividends. Amazing, precious moments were passed listening to their backseat rambling, or the comfortable silence we fell into. I don’t necessarily wish that life back — it was a logistical vortex I fell into for the perfect period — but it produced some of my sweetest held memories. How could I know that in those mundane unremarkable times, I’d be able to harvest so much?
I have the gift of an ear, and by an ear I mean a special affinity for people who talk. A lot. If I have fallen for you, friend or acquaintance, I enjoy the sound your voice makes, and the surprising words you use to express yourself, emotion exuded or tamped down on a gesture.
Eating is a good time. Beating myself up over eating is soul crushing. Where do you want to go for dinner? Time marches on, but as long as you’re awake, it doesn’t stray too far from the parade route.
Political arguments of the old days were enjoyable. Long, chewed over discussions of deeply held beliefs, that probably wouldn’t sway the other side, but might. A lost art I’d like to still partake in. But my heart would do better to stick with crochet. Or macramé. Whatever that is.
I would like to get my hours of cleaning, cooking, and laundry back, but sadly life doesn’t work that way. The clean smell will need to be reward enough, though it hardly seems worth it.
Hiking and biking are worthy and righteous, and bring me closer to something. I suspect that something is already within me and not like mushrooms. Which require foraging.
My television, fiction, and social media consumption absorb a shamefully high number of unrecoverable hours ripped from an imaginary productivity I was never going to achieve anyway.
I used to go to concerts, but that was in New York. I’m feeling my way around the intimately marvelous venues up here. The tickets they’re selling are for performers that either need to be propped up, or kids not even my kids know. Time is relentless. Unless you’re Stevie Nicks. Or the Rolling Stones.
Birds are a good onion of a hobby, each layer bringing me something more flavorful. They travel my trees and police my feeders. I‘ve figured out that the finches travel in packs, mourning doves scatter with tiny beeps, and the rose breasted grosbeak is good looking, but a dick.
Someone told me that if you make it to fifty, you’re likely to hit 63. I didn’t tell him that my grandfather died at 52, and my father at 62, or that I have some weird, only half-hearted death wish, just so I can stop worrying about whether I inherited either widowmaker’s widowmaker.
I‘m still hanging out, but the current climate, where reality is a choice, and time feels fungible, has me unsure of everything. Is that rain out there? Or the windswept waters of a melting glacier? Is bird sweat a thing? Guess I’ll find out. I have time. I hope.
