Time Keeps on Slippin, Slippin, Slippin

Lost Time

June 2024

Lost Time

I looked down at my wrist where my watch should have been and burst into tears, “My watch! It’s gone! "

It had been an expensive gift, a watch on a leather band decorated with lovely conchos of Montana Silver.

Sitting behind the man who had gifted me the watch, I held tightly to his waist. We sped down a California Highway on his Harley, as the watch slipped silently from my arm. He was the man I had promised to love forever. I would keep trying to hold on to that toxic relationship until it slipped away completely, like the time piece that fell from my arm.

The years I spent with him measured sixteen.

I guess the measuring of time began actively for me when I was a young girl and was gifted a Sesame Street alarm clock. I learned to count seconds, minutes and hours on that wind-up clock. I can still hear Big Bird’s distinctive, peppy voice waking me in the mornings.

“Wake up, it’s me, Big Bird! Time to get up! Open your little eyes now! Don’t roll over and go back to sleep. One foot out of bed. Now the other one. Ok. Have a nice day and don’t forget to wind the clock!”

When I outgrew the Sesame Street clock (in junior high), I was gifted my first wristwatch. It had a blue band, a blue face, and was trimmed with silver. I thought it made my wrist beautiful. In high school, I used some of my allowance and bought one of those cool digital, radio clocks. (I soon managed to have it confiscated, however, when I listened to the forbidden Rock-N-Roll radio stations like KSHE 95, blasting the airwaves out of St. Louis.) I owned many more time pieces in the years that followed, most of which are not memorable, except for that beautiful watch that flew from my arm to the pavement somewhere in California’s bay area.

The measuring of time can seem short or long. The latter is true when we are grieving. The years I have spent grieving my mother’s death measure almost fifty. The years I’ve spent grieving the death of my son measure almost sixteen.

Recently, while talking to a dear friend, I tried to answer her question as to how it is that I can remain active in life after the death of my son. “Does it get better with time,” she queried? I couldn’t, at first, sufficiently answer her question. Eventually I responded something like this:

“Significant time has passed since my son’s death, and I am able to look back over the years and recognize the pattern of grief. There are times when I still feel pain is going to completely overwhelm me. Those intense moments come less often but never go away. I understand now, after so many years of grief, that I need to lean into those moments of pain, accepting and experiencing them. Then, I need to move on with my life until they return again.”

An analogy could be taken from my daily hikes to the upper elevations of our mountain property. If I can get to the top where the land levels out a bit, the walking isn’t so difficult. Getting there isn’t easy, however. In fact, if I dwelt on the difficulty of the assent, I probably wouldn’t make the climb. My heart pounds and my body aches from the bottom of my feet up through my shoulders and down my arms. I usually have to stop to get my breath even though my body should now be conditioned to it.

It would be easy to say that it’s too hard a journey, not worth the climb, and that it makes me hurt. I could even question the purpose.

To take it a step further, I could stubbornly choose to make the climb each day but do so with my head low, looking only at the ground, trudging my way up the incline, and focusing on my pain.

Instead, what if I paused on the way up and took a breath, giving my heart some time to be still and cease its pounding? Maybe I could take those moments to look around and recognize that there’s beauty in the journey, even if it doesn’t compare with the views from the very top. I could even give myself permission to take one, two, or even three days off to rest!

Joy and sorrow, strength and struggle are allowed to live in the same heart. Sometimes we just need to give ourselves permission to experience both.

For all its beauty and expense, the watch I lost so many years ago was simply a tool I could use to chop infinity into seconds and give me the illusion that I was in control of my time and my life. When the marriage that never really worked and definitely had no future finally ended, I became available to participate in a relationship that has nourished me. My years with Mike measure almost twenty.

My mistake has often been that I try to keep the time that has already been spent. In so doing, I slam the door on present joy.

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Dear Reader,

I recently celebrated a birthday, and that has me thinking about the passing of time. I am much closer to 60 now and that seems like such a big number. It’s not that I mind growing older, for I am thankful to have the opportunity.

I remember feeling relieved when I made it to my 30’s and felt like I might actually have the opportunity to see my children into their own adulthood. It seems the nagging feeling that perhaps we won’t have the opportunity to live past a certain age is common for those who have lost a parent, especially at an early age. My mother never saw thirty and I was only seven years old.

We measure time in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years but we do that so we can put time in a box as we try make sense of it. We understand linear time as a series of events in sequence. But time is much bigger than what our minds are able to comprehend.

I recently listened to the audio version of Madeline L’Engle’s book, A WRINKLE IN TIME. It’s interesting how when particular subjects are in the forefront of our mind, we often recognize similar themes from various sources. For instance, it hasn’t been that long ago that a visiting pastor to our church expounded upon linear time in his sermon. This theme continued in the books I read over the winter on Celtic spirituality. The L’Engle book, as well, reminded me that time is finite only in our use and understanding from a human perspective.

If we are of the belief that life doesn’t end when our bodies return to dust, then viewing time as something more than what we are able to comprehend in our present condition might bring hope to those desperate events we previously considered endings.

All my love,

Tammy

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How we spend our days, is, of course, how we spend our lives. ~ Annie Dillard

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. ~ Albert Einstein

It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

The years teach much which the days never know. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it. It is only by stepping out of it, by taking a telescopic perspective, that we can then dip back in and do the work which our time asks of us. ~ Maria Popova

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Writing Updates:

Find my most recent submission Metabolic Disorders in Cattle in the July/August 2024 edition of Hobby Farms Magazine. You can also find two submissions in the most recent Self-Reliance Magazine entitled Making and Using Clabbered Milk and Making Butter, Buttermilk, and Ghee in the Homestead Kitchen.

I am currently up to date on contracted articles, and I am cutting back on the time I will spend on future submissions. It is my hope, that in so doing, I can set aside time for more creative writing. Most recently, I have been working on an Appalachian Stories Book for middle aged children.