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Category: time

Early Rising

Early Rising

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The story is the same, but each year has its revelation. This year’s was something I’ve noticed before but not with as much intensity:

On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark, 
and saw the stone removed from the stone.

 “Early in the morning.” “While it was still dark.” Of course!  She was up in the wee hours tending to those who needed her. It’s how most women I know make everything work, by getting a head start on the day.

I no longer juggle a job with young children, but I’m always trying to balance competing duties, to find time not just for the work for which I’m paid but the work for which I’m not. Time for family and friends; for shopping, cooking and cleaning; for emails and phone calls; for connection and solitude.

The early morning hours are my ally in this quest. They are the great elastic clause. They are when I catch up with others — and with myself.  

Daylight Savings

Daylight Savings

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I woke up an hour late this morning. No fault but my own. I turned off the alarm. But there is an explanation…

As I’m rushing around to make tea and write this post, I’m thinking about Daylight Savings Time. It is undoubtedly wonderful to have long evenings: to take a walk or putter around in the yard or even just to sit on the deck and read the paper with a glass of iced tea.

But the hour that was stolen had to be repaid. I couldn’t have it Saturday night … so I took it last night instead!

Routine Morning

Routine Morning

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I’m thinking this morning of routines and the comfort they provide. Filling the pot with water, checking email while it boils, starting this blog as it steeps.

Reach up to open the cabinet above the stove, grab the two boxes (my tea is a blend of decaf choices), warm the pot, pour boiling water over the tea bags, cover the pot with a tea cozy, then wait for the first cup to be strong enough to drink.

Routine motions become muscle memory. They transcend fatigue and despair. They are not flights of fancy, not the spark to light the fire. They are the 99 percent perspiration to the 1 percent inspiration. They are the engines of progress.

Pure Possibility

Pure Possibility

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End of the week. End of ideas? Probably not. They will emerge again, maybe even in a few minutes. But this is the time I have to write, this crazy early time, propelled by sleeplessness to grab the few moments I can reasonably (or not so reasonably) claim.

What is it that makes these morning minutes so sacred? It is, in part, the quiet. Others sleeping. Tea steeping. The duties of the day still a couple of hours away (unless I check work email!).

But it is also a sense of anticipation, of having another day. A day that at this point is still pure possibility, not yet freighted with what might have been.

New Hour, New World

New Hour, New World

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Yesterday I left the office, walked out the door and saw a sky lit from within, clouds shimmering with light and a flock of birds swooping in and out of sight.

It was a different hour, a different light, made possible by the time change. And while it means I leave and return home in darkness, it also means that my walk to Metro takes me by flaming trees, slanting sun and illuminated office windows that reveal what’s inside. Plants and posters, an American flag.

It was a new hour — and because of that — a new world.

Time Travel

Time Travel

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Last night I finished watching the movie “Interstellar.” It’s a long film; I had gotten halfway through it Tuesday evening and finished it up last night. But its length was befitting of its topic, the expansive subject of space and time.

Time, the fifth dimension, the true final frontier. Astronaut Cooper trapped in a box of boxes, able to see his daughter Murphy but unable to reach her, except in code, except, he realizes, through time itself, the watch he gave her before he left on his fantastic voyage to another galaxy.

Farfetched? Of course. But who hasn’t felt trapped in the here-and-now? Who hasn’t yearned to break free from the linearity of our lives? Just a peak at the future. Just a glimpse of the past — long enough to forgive, to restore, to understand.

Running Late

Running Late

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I have a watch with more beauty than brains, a timepiece whose oblong shape distorts the minutes and even the hours. Glance at it quickly and it’s easy to think you’re running late.

But when its strap broke last week I missed it more than I thought I would. Even a vague notion of time is better than no notion at all. I was reduced to taking out my cell phone (usually tucked away in a sleeve of my purse) and glancing at its digital display.

Doing this got me thinking about how much harder it is these days to say “I lost track of time.” Most everyone has a cell phone, and cell phones not only tell you precise minute and hour but they also automatically spring ahead or fall back. What has happened to immersion, to flow, to losing oneself in a task?

My watch is back in business now, but the questions remain.

One Hour

One Hour

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One hour is a pebble in the shoe, the insignificant that will not be silenced. Put in perspective it is nothing, this shift of time. With all the great world’s spinning, how could it be important? It is only a matter of accounting, right? A shift from one column to another.

But so exquisitely tuned are we, so finely adapted to familiar segments of darkness and light, that one hour brings a yelp of pain or a cry of joy. Sandpaper-eyed mornings, loose-limbed evenings. A stark jump to the cold days of early spring.

The black ice on the driveway and the snow on the deck makes it hard to take this hour seriously. This hour will not catapult us to spring. It is the alarm set too early, tugging us to ragged wakefulness in the middle of the night.

Morning Happens

Morning Happens

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When I work at home I can see the morning happen, can see night peel off around the edges.

No dramatic sunrise today, just steadily less dark. A lighter shade of gray and the tall oaks emerging from it, first the trunks, then the large limbs and finally a crowd of branches at the top.

Only now can I see the houses, three from this vantage point — gray, tan and brick. Only now do I notice the dark fringe around the horizon, the woods on the far side of the road.

But I keep my eyes trained on the sky, on the vast ceiling above us that finally gives way to day.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

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The candy is hidden so there will be some left for tonight. There’s a plump pumpkin for carving. And the yard is covered in crisp brown leaves.

I took this photograph at a pumpkin patch Suzanne and I visited three years ago. I remember even then the preciousness of time with her. (Peace Corps was already in her plans.) The preciousness of that time, telescoped as it was then, and especially as it is now during her leave, is just a compressed version of all the precious times we spend with those we love.

The ripe fruits of autumn remind me how important it is to store up those times. Store them up as a plant does, capturing sunlight, soil and rain.