Something Has Happened to Time

Something has happened to time.

I've caught a glimpse of it, twisting about and doubling back on itself the way a snake on a lazy summer day twists in and out of the rocks by the pond, unhurriedly.

The loops are the most fascinating part as if it has forgotten its way. I seem to be forgetting what I ate only a few days before or who I was with or what I heard. A snake eating its tail.

But that's not all. Time seems to be stretching in the wrong directions as well like a rubber band pinched in the wrong place. 

The path to here seems to stretch longer and longer with the minute details of years inordinately long and deep at certain parts. Like those lazy summer childhoods stretching out by my father's pond which would dry up rapidly come July, subverting our June effort—running about trying to save each struggling to breathe pollywog in our little red wagons, procured pots and pans, and the cement lined wheelbarrow but never completely succeeding in our rescue efforts. A deep dusty pit in August slowly filling again as we sat in our grade school desks, twitchy hands neatly folded on our desks so that by winter, frozen hard, Dad in his heavy boots and plowing a path with the Gravely, we'd tie up our skates, take the hands of the younger ones and spin to our heart's content till we no longer knew we had toes. Grandma's lovely knitted mittens barely warming our finger tips.

Or that ill fated marriage swept away in the romance of exploration—a long drive across pearly everlasting lined country roads up to the furthest reaches of the coast. The expansive deep ocean blue, a bent over minister in his yellow cable knit sweater and his newly wed wife, a double rainbow, the Perseids blazing through the night, a false sparkle of promise.

Or the blissful pregnancy and first year of motherhood. What a thing, the gift of pure radiant love. As if surrounded by a halo of protection, each minute, each hour recorded and replaying—the world becoming whole in the tiny personage that had not been before but would then and forever hold center stage in my heart. Even today when roles shift and it is uncertain who is holding up who but her unique talents, curiosity, strength, kindness, and adultness can not be denied as beautifully true.

Time pinched with cancer. These last three years (can it really be three?) play back in my head. Stage four colorectal. New treatments. Always hope. Endless chemo. Sleepless Benadryl nights. Prayers to Mary, Mom, and Dad only 6 years gone. Shifting our lives, subverting and twisting into knots our time. I called it shiny time and so it was and is. A lifetime of stored love released yet knit together into a bond of eternity. Stage five grief. The loop of infinity turning back upon itself over and over and over and over. And then gone. Like the burst of stars in a meteor shower on that random cloud free, moon free late summer evening.

Something has happened to time. No more dreams or desires, wants or needs that can ever be fulfilled. Like being caught in an eddy round and about. It stretches long in one way, short and shorter in another. From here to where death sits only a short inch, inch by inch away like my father's empty August pond awaiting the skaters on a frosty, star lined night.