“Patience and time do more than strength or passion.”
I’d never heard this quote before today, but having this come across my desk right now seems, well, fortuitous or serendipitous or…you know, some other “ous” that means that it was a nice thing to see just now.
The concept of time is a funny thing.
I do not embrace this concept generally, but especially when J is gone, I throw any concept of length of time right on out the window. It’s not that I lie about the amount of time that J and I are going to be separated. I just don’t think about it—don’t keep track. I live in this pretty blissful state of stupid that I affectionately refer to as The Land of Vagueness (it’s an admittedly bad name for a fictional world.)
“How long has he been gone?” “Oh, you know, a few weeks.”
“Time’s sure passing fast, huh?” “Is it? Ok.”
“Wow, I didn’t realize he’d been gone so long.” “Oh, you know, we’re moving right along.”
Daddy will be back in a little bit. Daddy will be back soon.
These are the phrases that I have come to rely upon as my go-tos; as my blissful statements of indistinct time and random activity. (And pleasant alternatives to what I ACTUALLY want to say when people not really involved in my life try to tell me how quick the passage of time is. How AMAZING that he’s already been gone so long; and that he’ll be back in the blink of an eye! By the way, these are not phrases from you that enter into my ear-hole happily. You have been forewarned. )
Until yesterday, I myself have had no real concept of this deployment length, other than that we’re someplace in the middle. Maybe it’s because I am not counting months. Maybe it’s because I don’t really know when he’ll be home other than a ballpark couple of weeks (probably…maybe… plus or minus…) Maybe it’s self-preservation, because if I don’t take the time to figure out how much time is left, I can buy into my own fib that it’s all going to be over soon.
I mean, hell, right now the only way I’m measuring time is in number of garbage days I have remembered to take the trash cans out to the street. (By the way, I’m 13 for 13 as of today. Yeah. I’m killin’ it with the trash.)
So, some days have passed. There are more days in front that will still need to pass. I’m painfully aware of the fact that we are currently stuck in the middle of the deployment. We’re not in the beginning stages where we’re still trying to figure everything out. We’re neither close enough to the end to start a countdown—nor closer to the end than the beginning.
It’s just the crappy middle part.
Owing to my lack of calendar dependence, and my general avoidance of all things time related, you will imagine my surprise when yesterday, Ellie came home from school and said to me, “Mommy, see Daddy in March?”
Now, my child has no idea what that means. No idea how long that is. No concept of the length of a day, or a week, or a month. She doesn’t know what that breaks down to in terms of minutes or hours. But all night last night she skipped around the house almost singing “see Daddy in March! See Daddy in March!”
I don’t know why this bothered me so much. I haven’t articulated the come-home timeframe to her, mostly because I don’t really know it myself. She definitely didn’t get this phrase from me, partially because I’m afraid to said it out loud for fear it won’t come true. (Sorta like spilling the wish you made when you blew out your birthday candles--best to just keep that one to yourself there buddy, you know, just in case…)
I’m sure some very well meaning person at her school, who had no idea of my aversion to labeling time, and who most likely was just attempting to calm my child who pretty constantly walks around asking for Daddy, just said “you’ll see Daddy again in March.”
In March.
When my kid so easily proclaimed what I haven’t been able to say, it broke me a little bit. Why did she have to say MARCH? Suddenly, I realized that March is MONTHS away (and seems like a thousand years away…) Just when I was starting to kind of let myself believe that I was almost done with all of this, there it was. March.
But the more I thought it about, the more I realized that maybe not everyone operates like I do. Some people, maybe even Ellie, need the direct object at the end of that sentence: See Daddy, When? In March (nerd alert: there’s definitely a diagrammed sentence in my head when I say that.) Maybe that brings some degree of comfort to her. Some degree of truth. Not a vague “soon” or “later,” but rather “March.” Regardless of how long that seems, it is a concrete end point.
So for now, I’m going to let the kiddo have her phrase. As my Ben says, “in time, I won’t hear what you say. But time takes time, you know?” And until that time comes, I need to remember that more so than passion or strength, right now, it is only patience that’s going to move the hands on the clock forward.
Patience, and just a little bit more time (16 more weeks, to be exact. If I had been counting…)
The concept of time is a funny thing.
I do not embrace this concept generally, but especially when J is gone, I throw any concept of length of time right on out the window. It’s not that I lie about the amount of time that J and I are going to be separated. I just don’t think about it—don’t keep track. I live in this pretty blissful state of stupid that I affectionately refer to as The Land of Vagueness (it’s an admittedly bad name for a fictional world.)
“How long has he been gone?” “Oh, you know, a few weeks.”
“Time’s sure passing fast, huh?” “Is it? Ok.”
“Wow, I didn’t realize he’d been gone so long.” “Oh, you know, we’re moving right along.”
Daddy will be back in a little bit. Daddy will be back soon.
These are the phrases that I have come to rely upon as my go-tos; as my blissful statements of indistinct time and random activity. (And pleasant alternatives to what I ACTUALLY want to say when people not really involved in my life try to tell me how quick the passage of time is. How AMAZING that he’s already been gone so long; and that he’ll be back in the blink of an eye! By the way, these are not phrases from you that enter into my ear-hole happily. You have been forewarned. )
Until yesterday, I myself have had no real concept of this deployment length, other than that we’re someplace in the middle. Maybe it’s because I am not counting months. Maybe it’s because I don’t really know when he’ll be home other than a ballpark couple of weeks (probably…maybe… plus or minus…) Maybe it’s self-preservation, because if I don’t take the time to figure out how much time is left, I can buy into my own fib that it’s all going to be over soon.
I mean, hell, right now the only way I’m measuring time is in number of garbage days I have remembered to take the trash cans out to the street. (By the way, I’m 13 for 13 as of today. Yeah. I’m killin’ it with the trash.)
So, some days have passed. There are more days in front that will still need to pass. I’m painfully aware of the fact that we are currently stuck in the middle of the deployment. We’re not in the beginning stages where we’re still trying to figure everything out. We’re neither close enough to the end to start a countdown—nor closer to the end than the beginning.
It’s just the crappy middle part.
Owing to my lack of calendar dependence, and my general avoidance of all things time related, you will imagine my surprise when yesterday, Ellie came home from school and said to me, “Mommy, see Daddy in March?”
Now, my child has no idea what that means. No idea how long that is. No concept of the length of a day, or a week, or a month. She doesn’t know what that breaks down to in terms of minutes or hours. But all night last night she skipped around the house almost singing “see Daddy in March! See Daddy in March!”
I don’t know why this bothered me so much. I haven’t articulated the come-home timeframe to her, mostly because I don’t really know it myself. She definitely didn’t get this phrase from me, partially because I’m afraid to said it out loud for fear it won’t come true. (Sorta like spilling the wish you made when you blew out your birthday candles--best to just keep that one to yourself there buddy, you know, just in case…)
I’m sure some very well meaning person at her school, who had no idea of my aversion to labeling time, and who most likely was just attempting to calm my child who pretty constantly walks around asking for Daddy, just said “you’ll see Daddy again in March.”
In March.
When my kid so easily proclaimed what I haven’t been able to say, it broke me a little bit. Why did she have to say MARCH? Suddenly, I realized that March is MONTHS away (and seems like a thousand years away…) Just when I was starting to kind of let myself believe that I was almost done with all of this, there it was. March.
But the more I thought it about, the more I realized that maybe not everyone operates like I do. Some people, maybe even Ellie, need the direct object at the end of that sentence: See Daddy, When? In March (nerd alert: there’s definitely a diagrammed sentence in my head when I say that.) Maybe that brings some degree of comfort to her. Some degree of truth. Not a vague “soon” or “later,” but rather “March.” Regardless of how long that seems, it is a concrete end point.
So for now, I’m going to let the kiddo have her phrase. As my Ben says, “in time, I won’t hear what you say. But time takes time, you know?” And until that time comes, I need to remember that more so than passion or strength, right now, it is only patience that’s going to move the hands on the clock forward.
Patience, and just a little bit more time (16 more weeks, to be exact. If I had been counting…)
No comments:
Post a Comment