RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT TIME

When I was a little kid, the time between Christmases was oh so long. The school year was just as long. Teachers were very old. Birthdays were few and far between. We didn’t grow very fast. And it seemed like such a long time before I was old enough to “do it (whatever it was) myself.” But now I look back and wonder how I got so old so fast?

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The first time I realized how fast time was flying was when I took a position as a secretary for a small group of clinical psychologists. One of my jobs was scheduling regular weekly appointments for the clients. I became aware that the weeks just flew by when I blocked out a month’s worth of weekly visits. Before I knew it, it was time to do the monthly billing. Then four more weeks and another monthly billing. The intensity of looking and booking ahead is, I think, what exacerbated the feeling of time rushing by.

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If I take a nice long nap in the daytime I am going to pay for it either by not being able to go to sleep when I get in bed at night, or waking up in the middle of the night because I am simply slept out. Sometimes having to decide which way I want it takes the delicious spontaneity out of an afternoon nap, rendering it not one of the really good ones! However, the few times I’ve been sick as an adult, I have learned that any daytime sleep does not count against your nighttime sleep.

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This week while I was babysitting Olivia and Justine, I learned that they do not retain much about what we do when I babysit them. This week a neighbor couple and their young 2 year old daughter, Flora, knocked on the door to deliver a package that had been misdelivered to them. I commented on how big Flora had grown since I saw her last, which happened to be last May. After the neighbors left, Olivia asked me how I knew Flora. I reminded her the last time I babysat we went to the park and met Flora and her dad there. Neither Olivia nor Justine had any recollection of going to the park. To me, going to the park with them was a real event. For them, it was just one of many such drop-ins at the park. They also have no memory of a song I taught them a number of years ago and which we have sung together many more times than I’d like to remember but not within the last year or so. My theory is that unless a person is a constant in the kids’ lives – like living next to them, or at least in the same town and seeing them all the time – a person will not be patterned into their memory until they reach about 13 years old. So I’m intending to live at least 10 more years so that both girls will have some personal recollection and remembrance of their grandma who loved them so much.

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I have always been inclined to make New Year’s resolutions but found it more productive to set five goals for each year. I started doing this in the mid-1990s – and have ended each year with a feeling of satisfaction over goals set and accomplished. It is a good feeling to strike things off my list. My goals for 2008 got short shrift this year. I only accomplished three out of the five, with another being started but stopped midstream. And in thinking about whether to put those unfinished two at the beginning of my 2009 list, I decided this year not to set any goals. I have some projects underway in which the timing is not up to me, and I’m afraid seeing the goals written down in black and white will put a burden on me that I don’t want. So since it is my list and my rules, I choose not to mess around with it in 2009. My time then will be open-ended and I can just flow with what is and what isn’t. After all, I’ve got time.

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Finally, my friend Nancy in San Francisco, after reading my Relativity I, II and III blogs, said she is just amazed at how much I remember of my childhood, that she certainly does not have those kinds of memories of her childhood. And I told her that may be so, but she needs to know there are some days I can’t remember what I’ve had for breakfast that morning, so it all balances itself out in the end!