Time Flows

Funny how the speed at which time passes for each of us is so relative to our personal perspectives. Once in my decadent youth I thought I would try peyote, and had, to put it mildly, a most interesting trip. Of all that seemed to happen, I most remember a point at which I tried to tell myself “It’s okay, this is only temporary.” Only another voice of my own said, “there is no such thing as time, only the eternal moment, and this is it.” That didn’t help matters. But time did pass, and things returned to what passes as normal.


Fast forward a dozen years, I’m sitting in my property law class in law school. The professor is a sort of old-school type, one who calls on one person at the beginning of the hour and keep that person on the hotseat the whole hour, while everyone else relaxes. I sat in the front row, and made the mistake of mentioning to my benchmate that he would never call on us, because it would be too hard for the rest of the class to hear. Well, he heard me, and as soon as we settled in he said, “Mr. Lewis, please summarize the case of X v. Y.” After a few minutes of being peppered with questions --in the Socratic method the target can never answer correctly, because each answer begets more questions -- I tried to take a glance at my watch, but didn’t, reminding myself that it didn’t matter what time it was, I was here for the entire hour. And a memorable one it was, but it did pass. Baptism under fire and a badge of hard-earned honor. And a reminder to keep my mouth shut.


Or my spinning class at the Y; it’s certainly the hardest physical thing I’ve done in years, and the machines all have timers on them. I cover mine timer with my sweat towel, because looking at it won’t help, I’m in for the hour. And the hour passes. So far I’ve survived it.


Those are times when the minutes dragged by.


Then here at home, I see the array of pictures of my twins, from infancy on, and now they are 21. Daughter is talking of moving to NY or Atlanta after she graduates (she goes to the hometown university and lives on campus but we see her most weekends). I said something about it to her and she said, “Did you think I would stay here all my life?”


Inside I said, yes. Parenting her and her brother have given our life so much shape,meaning, and value, and I’ll be damned if know where that time went, from the timid little girl posing for the photographer to the confident woman on stage in a University play. As that old song goes,


“Where are you going my little one. . . . I looked around and she’s gone.”


I guess it’s time.