Standing in Time

I think in calendars. I can often picture my week ahead on my work calendar, naming what each day holds, meeting by meeting. I can look ahead in my mind and know whether next Friday contains any evening commitments, whether on a random day in April my older son has a tennis match.  

I’ve understood what my husband calls “calendar math” for as long as I can remember. When I met him, Jason didn’t know that, except in leap years, every date this year will be one weekday later next year. Example: If my birthday is on a Tuesday one year, it will be on a Wednesday the next year—unless it’s a leap year, in which case it’ll be on a Thursday since it occurs after Leap Day.  

Since I always remember the number of days in each month, I can easily calculate what day of the week a date will be, regardless of how many months in the future it is. Just give me a minute. 

“Calendaring” is a strength of mine, I guess. I enjoy it. I enjoy planning out vacations. I enjoy seeing how our lives will blend and meld to fit both work and fun on a weekly and monthly basis. 

And sometimes, when I’m driving especially, I stand at a moment in time, looking back and forward, further and further. 

I look back six years from today and remember I had not yet gone with our family to Scotland where I would teach in a study abroad program and we would live for ten weeks. The trip would transform our lives in so many ways I cannot describe them all. At this moment in time six years ago, however, I wasn’t even sure if we could go. Enrollments in my courses were nonexistent to low and I was sick with worry that our adventure would be cancelled and our hearts broken. Meanwhile, I was busy moving my mom over from Minnesota, while working full-time, and also practicing for and performing two 80s-themed rock concerts on the organ at our church, a fundraiser for our local Pride Center. 

I was working at that time for an institution that doesn’t exist anymore.  

My kids were kids—about to turn 8 and 11. They are now young men—about to turn 14 and 17. 

My husband had not yet been diagnosed with cancer. 

We hadn’t yet made the difficult decision that our kids would go away for high school to a boarding school, one they wanted to attend to feel a deeper sense of fulfillment. 

And of course, the world, and my family, hadn’t gone through the COVID pandemic. 

Standing in this moment now, I marvel at how much has occurred in just six years. And I look forward, the planner in me wanting to map out to the detail what will be on my calendar six years from now. 

It isn’t possible. I cannot plan what my life will be like then, who will be where, what my boys—who in six years will be about to turn 20 and 23—will be doing, thinking, feeling.  

The older I get, the more I realize that standing in time like this is healthy and helpful for me. It helps me keep it all in perspective, to recognize the limits of my planning abilities, the limits of my control. It helps me worry a little bit less. 

It’s not that I believe I have no control or that my life is predestined. I don’t believe that I have no free will and God’s plan will take me where God wants me to go.  

I know that my life is packed with decision points: how I spend this moment, this hour, this day; whether I propose a day trip, a vacation; whether I stay in a job, when I retire, what I encourage Jason towards doing in his career; what I say to this person (or don’t say); how I act and how we choose to spend our money; what I eat today. All these decisions help write my future. 

Despite decisions galore, I know I don’t control it all. I can’t foresee it all. I can’t plan or calendar it all. I may be able to tell you that two years from now, a certain date will be a Monday, but I really can’t tell you what we’ll be doing that Monday. Maybe it’ll look like this past Monday at work. Maybe it will be completely different. I feel a little bit like my teenage sons, so anxious for their futures, because part of me is thrilled by the adventure of not knowing what is to come that day in the future. I look ahead in wonder. 

Sometimes I enjoy taking this “moment of time” game further out, thinking back and forward 20 years or 30 years. I picture myself in high school or college, trying to re-inhabit my mindset and perspective then. It’s a fascinating introspective activity, revealing much about who we were and how that helped us become who we are. The exercise also helps me understand my boys better at this stage of their lives. It gives me greater compassion for their current state of mind. 

Then I move ahead 20 or 30 years. I wonder who I will be—if I will be—in my early 70s or 80s. I’ve been listening to the book The High Octane Brain: 5 Science-Based Steps to Sharpen Your Memory and Reduce Your Risk of Alzheimer’s which includes a thought exercise where you are to imagine your older self and what you want to be able to do and think—using that as a motivation to follow the lifestyle changes recommended so you can, if you live that long, reduce cognitive decline. I picture myself in my 80s and hope I am still able to read and write, go to a baseball game with a friend or my boys (then in their 40s!), spend long periods of time in Scotland with Jason (I told you that trip was life changing), and engage in conversation with family and friends.  

I am now old enough (51) that I can even play this game in an increment of 50 years. I picture myself as a toddler, recalling pictures and stories from my mom. I think of her life then and what she was doing to help me grow and develop. I think of the pain we were already experiencing as a family because of my dad’s untreated mental health issues, the ways that was being etched into my mind and self, long before I can recall it.  

And I look ahead 50 years and think, as much as I know I declared several years ago that I hoped to live to 100, it may not happen, let alone 101. And there it is, my end and my beginning, both in sight in one view. 

Somehow, although intimidating, these thought experiments aren’t depressing for me. I look up at the river in front of our house as I write. I often have these thoughts, these moments of being lost in time, as I drive or look at nature. I’m listening to the pianist George Winston. I’m in good company for what might feel like scary or depressing thoughts.  

I know someday when I play this game, looking ahead too far will mean I am envisioning a future world I don’t inhabit. I think that too will be healthy and helpful, if I do it right. It will remind me that I have today. It will remind me that I had many amazing yesterdays, certainly not all good, but mine nonetheless. It will help me put into perspective, as it always does, what I can control, what is mine, and what is the world’s.  

The river flows on. There is a small patch of blue in the sky within my view. The possessions and people I love are within my orbit. I take a deep breath. I stand in this moment in time, letting the past stay with me, allowing the future to remain an exciting adventure, undiscovered country, a dream.