Time: Flying or Dragging?

It’s the beginning of summer, the fateful moment when the days begin getting shorter. I exaggerate my dread. But I can’t believe this lengthening of days is coming to an end. It seems that only yesterday we were in Jamaica with Morri and Joe, celebrating her graduation from Hunter, a beautifully relaxed week of indulgence and long morning walks. Only yesterday, and yet it seems so long ago. What is happening to time? Two seasons gone in an instant.

I know. Time has been speeding up as I’ve gotten older.  Time used to go so slowly. Did I even know that time existed before 4th grade? That’s when I started in the afterschool sports program –  4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Divided into two teams, one team at each end of the gym, we played War. You couldn’t cross the halfcourt line. You threw the ball across the line at the team. They threw at you. If you got hit by a ball, you were out and had to go and sit along the wall until the next game. If you caught the ball, the kid who threw the ball was out. The 6th graders could throw the ball so hard, and they were so big. I thought it would take forever to get to 6th grade. That’s my first memory of time.

Since then, I’ve been watching time speed up.  The busier I was, it seemed, the faster time flew. A day of back-to-back meetings was over before I realized that I’d forgotten lunch. Retirement is different. I have few meetings. A couple of times a week I’m doing my Zen teaching, a couple of lunches with friends if I’m lucky, maybe a doctor’s appointment. I still have my calendar, and it’s crowded with my routine: zazen, morning pages, writing, walking, more writing reading, cooking dinner. Not that I follow the schedule, but it’s there in case I need to know that I have something to do.

I’m really not busy, and yet time is flying. Whole seasons are flying by. Spring, which is a favorite, has passed almost unnoticed. Time should be dragging. Although I have been doing almost nothing, time has flashed past. The big events in my life have been events in other people’s lives. I was on the edge of my seat with Morri, waiting to hear about graduate school. The rejections were piling up. No acceptances. Only a couple of waiting lists, and then the waiting lists turned to gold. Morri will be going to the MFA program in creative writing at Boston University. If all clicks, she’ll slide from there into the doctoral program in English Lit at CUNY. I’m so happy for her. Proud Papa, but what did I do? I cheered her on during the waiting game.

That really doesn’t explain what happened to winter and spring. And yet, some days do drag. I check the phone, thinking about dinner, only to find that it’s mid-afternoon. How can time drag and fly at the same time? Maybe it’s the hourglass. Maybe what I’m sensing is that the sands of my life are running low even when they’re running slowly. In a blink of nothing, two seasons have come and gone.