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Sunday, December 2, 2007

Everything's a Matter of Time

Maybe it is because I fell asleep at 8:30 last night. Snuggling with the hubby and fully dressed, I slept with the ostinato of my ticking Timex. Maybe it's because I wanted this morning to never end. Cool breezes tickled my bare skin and gently rattled the blinds. Their soft percussion, combined with the birdsong and backyard fountain, created a soothing Sunday morning symphony. But as I lay on the table under the therapeutic touch of Oscar the Magnificent my moments of muscular-skeletal seventh heaven were interrupted by a disturbing thought. We are all Time's bitch.

Time doesn't fly when we're having fun, nor does it drag on when we're bored. No, she's a sadistic SOB. Whether you're in the midst of lovemaking or root canal, an hour is an hour is an hour. Life isn't a game. There's no Time out. The clock won't stop. Whether we've committed a crime or not, we all serve Time. She rules every moment, waking or sleeping, with her incessant, steady move forward. Foolish humans, we try to race against Time, but she always wins. It would be wonderful to kill Time, that is to stop her unrelenting draining of the biological clock that governs our living and dying.

Cher isn't the only one who would like to turn back Time (though she certainly has tried with her series of cosmetic procedures). Given a chance, I'd turn Time back to our newlywed days. EJG and I loved to surprise our grandparents, visiting them just to be with them, to give them the only gift we could afford in our stone broke years. We shared our time. Whether enjoying a meal or playing a game of cards together, that was Time well spent. But Time stole our grandparents away from us. Could I turn time back to my baby's early years? Once again to scoop her little being into my arms, allowing myself to believe that my embrace could protect her from everything the world would throw at her? Of course not. There's no Time but the present.

It is true that time is money, but it is a lie that the best things in life are free. Time is a currency with a limited supply. We're all living on borrowed Time, and part of her game is never letting us know when her generosity ends. Spend wisely my friends. Time is not on our side.

3 comments:

DiaBelo said...

This is very rich, JSG. I love the image of time spent in your youth with your grandparents at the end of their time. Time well spent = a life well spent. Thanks for the new word, ostinato.

Anonymous said...

I am plagued by thinking about time too much. I've always been that way and having a baby makes me more intensely aware of the passing of time. There is peace in the fact that we can't control it though; we can only do as you have said, spend it well. Thanks for a thoughtful post, one that becomes more poignant late on a Sunday afternoon.

Cora Spondence said...

"We are all Time's bitch." I do believe that is the ghetto translation of Einstein's life's work and a clearer one at that.
Time as the dominatrix of us all. I couldn't be prouder of that metaphor.