Skip to main content

What kind of time is this?



The making sense of time chronicles roll on.  My son has declared more than once this week that he thinks we are running late.  When I ask him how he knows this (is it the slant of the light? his insistent internal clock?) he states that he checked the time on the microwave before we left.

"What kind of time is this?" he asks.  What number, what happens now?

Right now time is still the only time there is but there is evidence that it is losing ground to another "kind of time" which he hears other people discuss, adjust and regulate.  It is not yet something tangible that he can hold in his hand and line other things up against.  Even though the day has a linear progression from morning snack to afternoon snack and bedtime snack, time, expressed as a number, which can be measured against other these things is still vague but slowly and surely taking hold.

He  noticed a calendar last night and wanted to know what comes next.  Looking at a clock or a calendar was once like showing him photos in an album from a trip that we took before he was born.    Now, it is like something he has seen on t.v. or in a dream.  Something he has seen with his own eyes but does not yet fully understand how it relates to him.

What kind of time is this? Is this preschool time? Is this candy store time? Is it bedtime?  Is this stay at home with mama and daddy time?  What kind of time is this?




Labels:

Comments

  1. introphoto3/28/2012 6:39 am

    I love this, and it is something I have never really thought about. How we become a part of the time continuum.... I guess it does, slowly, take hold of us...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still.   We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue.  Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision.  They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped.  Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...
1 comment
Read more

the words fell out

 Despite being an introvert, I do often process big life events (and many many small ones) out loud by verbally hashing out my thoughts with whoever will put up with me. But this morning when I woke up to the big red blotch on the U.S. map...all my /the words fell out.  They fell out unsaid, unformed. Got to work and probably , in another time, would have annoyed my co-workers, dominating the conversation with my verbal extrusions, but not today. I just mutely stared across at them and nodded. My dad came for lunch.  Normally, we relish a good political diatribe, especially when we feel sure of our perspective, but this time, all I could do was munch on fries and marvel at all the unarticulated thoughts that I was not even bothering to retrieve. The silence inside me was noticeable.  Social media was awash with reactions and I just looked away. I couldn't bear to read one word about it. I was not receptive to any reactions,  accusations, reflections,  words...
Post a Comment
Read more

I entered August without you.

 I won't visit you this month.  You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you.   I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.
1 comment
Read more