Time was an interesting thing. It
could creep, and it could fly. It could go too fast and too slow. It could get
lost, but never found. And it never stopped going. These things Morticia
understood about it. She wished very desperately that she could see this
strange beast. It must have wings, and legs. It was probably majestic and
powerful, probably like the pictures of dragons she saw in her father’s study.
Of course, it was also a unit of
measurement. Her father had tried to explain this, holding up his old, wind up
clock. He had said that it helped people know what time it was. He said that
watches and clocks were representations of time.
They were usually round, and they
ticked, so Morticia assumed that time made a sort of ticking sound as it went
along. She couldn’t reconcile herself to it being round, though. Perhaps it was
like those paintings in the museum that just looked like splashes of color, but
actually represented something else.
There were also different kinds of
time, she discovered. There was the second, which was by far the smallest kind.
Then there was a minute and an hour, a day and a week, a month and a year.
There were decades, and centuries and millennia. Eons, too, but they were so
large that she hardly thought they could be of the same family. Morticia
reckoned that the smaller the time was, the louder it ticked. Eons were
obviously so large that you couldn’t hear any ticking anymore. She wasn’t sure
about the other ones that came after a year.
But she was still confused. Because
if time was a unit of measurement, then what did it measure? Was it distance?
Or maybe time could be translated into the cups that her mother used when
baking. Teaspoon, tablespoon, cup… no, they didn’t match up with time.
A new variable entered into this
confusing concept; that of days of the week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then they repeated. Did that mean that,
in the entire universe, there were only seven days, but that every other kind
of time was limitless? How many seconds could the world support? Obviously
quite a few, but then, how many eons could there be?
And then there was the problem of
her being five years old. Did that mean that she had five years in her
possession? Were they kind of like pets? And if so, why wasn’t she allowed to
play with them? Perhaps her father kept them in his study. If that was the
case, though, they couldn’t be very large, because she’d searched through the
study many times, looking for her time.
Time was also short, and often
running out, although out of what it was never said. Perhaps time ran out of
sugar, like the Big Bad Wolf in the book her teacher read to the class. Or
maybe it was always running out the door. That would explain why she could
never find her five years.
When Morticia asked why her
grandmother had gone away, her father said that time had aged her until she was
too weary to stay in this world, but that she went to a better place. So time
had some effect on people. She knew that her age was five years, so maybe the
years were hanging on her, somehow, and the more that accumulated the harder it
would be to walk. She spent several hours in front of a mirror, twisting and
turning to get a good look at her back, trying to see if her years were there.
In art class, they were told to draw
a picture, and Morticia tried endlessly to figure out what time looked like.
Short and fast with wings, and constantly running out the door. She drew little
babies, sixty to every minute mother, although she wasn’t sure if she actually
made sixty because that was a big number. The hours were harder to fit on the
paper, because she was trying to draw everything to scale.
When her teacher came by she said
that it was a nice picture of dragons, but that she really didn’t think they
varied in size that much. And what were they doing in a house? Morticia,
discouraged, buried the picture in the back of her closet. Years later it would
be discovered by her fifteen year old self, getting ready to go on her first
date. She had been looking for the other dragon earring to complete her outfit
when she found the paper.
In one glance all of her childhood
fancies came rushing back and she gave a soft, breathless chuckle. A wistful,
sad feeling twisted in her stomach as she thought, “I know exactly how much one
second is worth.” That was how long it took her to say yes to the boy now
waiting for her downstairs.
And then, in the movie theater, her
hand clasped in his, she thought again, “I know just how slow time can go, and
just how fast it flies. I know how to lose track of it and how it’s never found
again.”
And then, years later, as she
watched her children growing older, she looked at the stretch of little dragon-like
times that counted to sixty and grew, counted to sixty, and then twenty-four,
seven, three, twelve, and so on. “I know how short time is, and how it hangs
off of your skin, weighing you down,” she thought, breathing in the
rejuvenating steam of her tea.
On her death bed, she pressed her
childhood drawing into the young hand of her great grandchild and she smiled.
“In heaven, there is no time,” she
murmured, and there was a certain amount of sadness in her voice. “Enjoy it
while you have it.”
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