Recollection

 

There is something strange I am noticing about time which is that it really doesn’t exist.  What I mean by this is that time is just a construct that doesn’t have any meaning outside of the meaning we impose on it.  When I tell someone about something I did ten, twenty, forty years ago, the number of years has no heft of meaning to me.  Something that happened 50 years ago can feel more clear and full and real to me than something that happened 5 years ago or even a day ago.  Time passing does not make my memory of an event fuzzier. At least this is how it feels to me in the recollecting.

 

This hits home to me strongly when I see a parent with a small child like I did today at the lake.  As I stood in the lake, ankle deep, taking in the fragrance in the late afternoon wind, a little one  wobbled by, his fathers following closely behind.  When he felt unsteady, he would reach out a chubby little hand completely faithful that one father or the other would grab hold to give him balance.  The child so amazingly vulnerable and yet perfectly protected in that moment, his two father giants by his side.  As I watched, I could feel my own daughter’s hand reaching out to hold mine as she wobbled at the lake’s edge, the surprise on her face when she accidentally tumbled under, her sputtering mouth as I pulled her up and cooed that she was okay.  She has walked the earth for 23 years now but her three year old self is still that close. When the child is small and we need to care for their needs hour by hour, each day stretches long into the horizon.  To the fathers on the beach, their 23 year-old son of the future must seem a lifetime away when each hour with their one-year old feels like an entire day.  But when they reach that far off vantage point, it will not feel as much time has passed.  

 

Time passing doesn't have a measurable feel to it. Time is only a thought construct not an object like rungs on a ladder or wood stacked in an ever larger pile. There is no instrument that can measure my 59 years on this earth.  My heart holds the experience of my life deep inside but it only takes the right scent or light touch on the wrist to bring it up to the surface and back into the world. 

 

We don’t progress through life as if we are climbing a ladder or walking down a road.  Our journeys are more like journey of trees which expand out from the center core.  Every experience is carried along in the growth with nothing left behind.  The past accompanies us through recollection.  Because the future is unknown, it has the feeling of something far away like a mountain although there is no distance between us and the future. 

 

There is something of a comfort in all of this.  That time is not a real thing frees me up to let each day and moment unfold with less fear that I am losing something precious.  Because everything beloved we experienced is still with us.  The painful parts come along also to shape us.  Like trees, the beloved and wounded parts give us our particular shape, the knot in the trunk, the bent spine, a wild turning towards the light.