catching up
by bam
the coffee kept coming. the chocolate pumpkins, finally, were peeled of their shiny aluminum shells. picked at, nibbled till tummies cried ouch.
the breakfast was over, the morning was slow. was going nowhere but right where it was.
it was that most sacred of hours, the time so elusive these days. it was catch-up, pure and simple.
and i’d not seen it coming. wasn’t scheduled, or penned on the calendar. it simply unfolded. and, given the weekdays that bump by in a blur–i’ll be late, pick me up, i have a rehearsal, i need to go early, can you drive me–it felt more than essential. it felt like a beacon of unfiltered light.
it was light, i am certain, that both of us need. it’s how we are wired. it’s a light that opens the heart, sifts through to places that need light to breathe.
with a boy who, by the hour, slips toward a life all his own, with a boy being pulled in so many directions, this catching-up time is the one patch of still water in seas that could rock us apart. i cling to the life rope, i cling to the time that carries us over the waves and the winds and the storms that might brew.
questions are asked, questions that can’t be cobbled on the fly, out the door, with one eye on the pencil solving quadratic equations.
questions that, one after another, sink deeper, mine places that only come out of the shadows there in that unfiltered light.
thoughts come too. new thoughts. dots connected. we are, neither of us, racing to come to conclusions. we are thinking together. and together, sometimes, we stumble on truths, on visions, on notions that would have escaped us had we not been digging together.
it is the difference between a dash through the woods and a meander. you get to the other side, either way, but you might miss the mushrooms there by the trunk of the tree. and you might not catch the glint of the gold as the sun pours through the now-amber leaves.
in some houses i think–and some times of the year, even at ours–the weekends are more of the blur. blur upon blur. no wonder we’re gasping for air.
but i fight back. i pull every trick in the book to keep spaces of time unchained, unclaimed, unbooked. i have no agenda for those hours. don’t know, even, how they’ll be used. but if they’re not there in the first place, there’s no chance for catching-up time. breathing time. no time for connecting the dots of a week, and a world, that desperately need interpretation.
since the invention of time, really, since genesis, since in the beginning, there’s been a knowing that time requires two speeds: the time for creation, the mondays through fridays, do-your-job, make-the-land-and-the-seas, don’t-be-late, carve-the-beasts-of-the-jungle, the-birds-of-the-air, turn-out-the-light, set-the-alarm; and the time for just being, the blessing of sanctified time, sabbath defined.
so what are we doing, so many of us, so much of the time, thinking we can trump all the slow time? take a short cut, a by-pass, speed things up, ignore the moments when nothing much happens.
but really those are the moments when we sink, surely we do, into the core of the matter, when we go into the parts where the being is done. past the mere interstice, the blank spots and hollows, into the organs of thinking and feeling. where sense–and soul–dwell.
i found myself all weekend feeling blessed for the power of catching-up time. that whole notion of daylight savings time, of setting the clocks this way or that. it’s really, all of it, just a reminder that time is a gift.
we can take it and savor it. hold it up to the light. we can sit with the ones who we love, pick apart chocolate pumpkins, decipher the world as we see it, mine deep into each other’s heart.
or we can pant right through all of the hours. check our digital watches. hit the gas. find ourselves at the end of the day, and the week–even our lives, if we don’t watch it–hardly knowing where all the time went.
that’s not the way i want my days to end. not the way i choose to watch time pass me by.
where and how do you find catching-up time? do you shove aside all sorts of obligations and requests and demands? do you say, sorry i’m busy, even when you’re not? just so you can savor the gift of time by yourself, or time with those who need nothing more sacred than to breathe the same air in the very same room? to chew the same thoughts?
today is, by the way, a most sacred day. it is the birthday of the girl i so love. she’s bright light defined. no wonder her name is sweet claire. she is 17. and she is the girl i sometimes pretend is more than a friend, more like the daughter i never did get to hold in my arms. happy blessed day, bright light in so many lives.
i am in the same boat as our freshman friend: living in the idea of new trier. to catch up (with my own thoughts, or others), i have to make myself disregard A People’s History, or logarithmic functions. in the end, it’s worth it to miss a 5-point homework to keep that little piece of sanity, i think. thanks for the birthday wishes ❤
I just returned from an island, islands seem like good places to be away from time, as the business of the mainland is a ferry ride away.It was brief, but felt like wondrous eternity. We arrived at noon and left by ten the next day. My kindred spirit, a wise woman and sage, invited me to go to the Whidbye Institute with her. We stayed in a tiny hermitage, named bagend, sp? which i think is taken from the tolkein novels if i’m not mistaken.No alarm clocks, just a wood stove and big windows that let in the star lit sky and the first hint of morning light. My friend and I agreed that after setting an intention for our brief retreat, we would keep quiet until the next morning.And so I ate when I was hungry, went to bed when it seemed fitting and inbetween I read, journaled and walked a labyrinth. I think sometimes it takes getting away to a little treehouse beneath douglas firs to soak in the beauty of spaciousness.
Oh for an island like yours slj! My Lord, what bliss! My catch up time is unfortunately usually between about 10 or 11 and 1 at night, when I tend to straightening things, looking at the paper, perusing catalogs–nothing very worthy of my time but I am desperately drinking in the quiet all the while. It’s a rather anemic form of renewal, particularly since one feels so dreadful at 7 the next morning. Time to trace out a labyrinth on the living room rug, I think. Or maybe, just maybe, I can get my children to agree to a vow of silence every now and again.
oh dear, slj and all at the table, to be on an island…..some of us can only dream. we can pretend. thank God for that great good instrument of creation, the imagination. i’m with jcv in drooling over the notion of being far off, alone, in the woods, a ferry ride away. wood stoves and tall stretchy windows that let in the star light and first light. but really it’s having the kind of a sage and a friend who allows you to be your deep-breathingest self. a self who chooses silence over chatter. a friend who sees the magic in stars, and in walking through woods. i imagine a place in the woods where all of us, all who are drawn to the table and chairs, gather with our banged-up kettles of soup, our bread hot from the oven. our softest wool blankets. and the pages of books that feed us as much as–if not more than–what we ladle from there on the pot-bellied stove. if we squeeze our eyes hard enough, if we think till our brains pop, might we make it happen…..where do we go to catch that ol ferry?
mom i love your chocolate pumpkin picture.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!