Time

Currently Reading:

Suzanne Collins, Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Frank Bill, Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories

Currently Listening To:

Boy & Bear - Harlequin Dream

Thirty-two-years-old used to sound so old when I was younger.

I am a teenager looking up at my parents. How excited they are about things I deem the most mundane. My mother gets a bread maker, constantly wondering if her children wants bread. My father obsesses with his tools, whirring and grinding coming from the garage. My neighbors constantly are cutting the grass. It makes me wonder if the grass needs to be trimmed daily. I don’t want a part of that world, a Groundhog-Day-effect. Murder mystery parties and spaghetti dinners and cookbooks and talking about how only, if only, there were more time in the day.

All this while I swim in the shallow end, realizing that I never understood why people loved to just sit in water so much. Taking my cheap shin-splitting scooter down to the Catholic church, wondering if I could finally do the tricks I never once learned to do. All I had was time. The oyster of the world was mine.

But then you grow old. You become that dreaded 32. You see how beautiful and awesome mundanity truly is. You see things at the grocery store and wonder if you could make them yourself, grow them yourself. What is going on! Are you talking about gardening? You’d see your own mother spending half a day in the flower beds with a small shovel and printed flowers on her gloves. You’d hide just so she didn’t see you, pull you into the dirt with her. But now you are a golden 32 and you want dirt on your hands so badly. Want to eat the fruits of your labor. Hell, now you understand your mother’s obsession with making bread, don’t you? Except now you can’t find active yeast anywhere to save your life.

You’ve always loved reading but now it is an imperative. A day without reading is a day wasted. Going so far as to adding book-buying into your monthly budget. There are other things that make you realize the past just folds over on itself. You’re a child and you couldn’t care less how you are seen. But then your self-esteem becomes a double-headed dragon and you are all hair gels and mirrors. If only that period of your life rushed by quicker. Because now you are here, knowing that you’ve done as much growing as you are going to do, emotionally and physically. Have finally fit into your personality like a tailored suit. And if someone has a problem with it? Tough shit, world. You’ve spent thirty-two years to get to this point and have the scars to prove it.

So. Our life at thirty-two.

We will wake up and wonder what that new ache is all about. We aren’t going to do anything about it. What is an ache without a friend? A lonely ache. We will wonder if it is standard to brush your teeth before or after coffee, and spend a week doing either. Reading with our coffee is something we never realized would be the brightest point in our day. As long as we have that, our template is set. We’ll keep peeking at the oven. Not that we think it will explode or cook us a loaf of bread (if only). We just want to see the time, even though we have a watch on our wrist and our phone within arm’s reach. We don’t want to go to work, just like we didn’t want to go to school once. But now it’s because we feel like we don’t have enough time. We want to put a bookmark in our day as soon as possible or the bastards will take everything from us.

But we go to work. We may put on a face today that says “everything is fine” and hit it home with a wink. But more than likely we won’t even pretend. We will say our weekend was fine, didn’t do much. When in truth we did exactly what we wanted to, and it is only when “didn’t do much” hits our lips that we feel deflated by it. We read. We drank coffee. We saw a bird and it took all of our attention for two full hours. We don’t want to bookmark our days with events but it is all we can do to attempt to make time stop. If we tell others that our days were spent with useless tasks then we haven’t used our bookmarks. But what do we have to prove?

They say as you get older all you have to give is your time. Not your talent. Not your money. Your time. Because every minute spent with a task is a minute that you are giving away. This is something that we only realize as we hit twenty-five. Thirty. Thirty-two. Even more so as the decades pass. So we go outside and we find the dirt. We shovel some up and dig around, hoping for worms. We taste a smidge of it and don’t even look around to see if anyone is watching.