Does anybody really know what time it is?

back porch/bird room

Tick tock, motherfu%@er. This could be the theme of my current life phase.

living room

I think I’ve told this story before, but I remember when I was 15 worrying that my mom was at death’s door, maybe even one foot over the threshold, and that I would somehow have to go on without her. How would I manage? Would I be forced to go live with my dad? Would my brothers and I all end up in the orphanage? Would I have to run away and live on the mean streets?!?

Mom was 35 at the time. THIRTY-FIVE.

I’m turning 70 this year, and I’m here to tell you my take on time has drastically changed. It took another twisted turn when I retired just before I turned 65—time crawled to a stop as I re-thought my daily life, and it simultaneously sped up as I made friends with my mortality. How could it be doing both?!?

kitchen

I won’t say there’s no such thing as time—as Siddhartha argued—though I have come to believe that time, at least our marking of it, is irrelevant. If I get up with the dogs at 5 a.m., the world goes on. If I sleep in till 10 a.m., the world goes on. If I stay in bed all day reading another Louise Penney novel and eating Scottish shortbread cookies, the world…well, you get it.

All that time I spent worrying about getting older, and what happened? I got older anyway. All that time I spend slathering on 18 organic Norwegian moisturizers, shea and beeswax magnesium body butters, beef tallow and Manuka honey hand cream, coconut oil and rosemary foot creams, and what’s the result? I have a face full of beautiful wrinkies, veiny longshoreman hands, skin that flakes off every winter, and tired feet that smell pretty good.

music room

Some days, I don’t know what time/day/month it is—unless I look up at my 92 clocks and calendars or at my slave-driving Apple watch, which also helps me remember to be mindful, drink water, and stand up.

Speaking of which, I have my Apple watch, which syncs to my phone’s calendar, in which I keep track of birthdays, appointments, Ray’s band gigs, my poetry stuff, my kids’ and grandkids’ events…basically my life. I have two wall calendars, one upstairs and one downstairs on which I track the same info; I have a purse-sized monthly calendar with the same info; and I have a BIG kitchen white board on which I write the current week’s activities/appointments. I STILL forgot a speech therapy appointment (post-stroke vocal cord exercises) and had to reschedule.

broken but still in the living room

I also seem to have a sort of love/hate relationship with time now. After working since the age of 14 (except for three periods of late pregnancies/childbearing/birth to pre-K homing), I now mostly refuse any unnecessary scheduling of my life. I don’t like to join things that require regular attendance; hence, my spotty or non-participation in clubs, organizations, and social/exercise/spiritual/political groups.

I mostly arrange things so that I only have to attend/do ONE thing per day, so the rest of the day is mine all mine. If I kayak, that’s it for the day. If I have a doc appointment, that’s it. If I clean the bathroom, that’s it. If I’m going out in the evening (getting more and more rare), I don’t do anything else that day. I jealously guard my time now, after years of feeling like I never had enough. At long last, I’m the master of my days!

kitchen

At the end of Herman Hesse’s novel, Siddhartha contemplates the river and its cycle of flowing, evaporating, raining, filling, flowing, evaporating, etc. and comes to the conclusion that time is an illusion. And when I remember that the stegosaurus had been extinct for 80 MILLION YEARS before the tyrannosaurus even existed, I think Siddhartha may have been onto something.

kitchen

Do I still watch the clocks (one in almost every room of our house)? Slavishly. So much for being the master, I guess…