Time Passages

"I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date! No time to say, 'hello,' Goodbye! I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!"

So lamented the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

I hear there are ways of slowing down time, but I have yet to find one that I can consistently practice. Some days seem to go by much more quickly than others, and those are the days that seem to be the least productive.

When you're young, and things do manage to get done, it seems there must be some cosmic To-Do list, and Time simply presents itself in a natural unfolding, during which, everything you need to do actually happens. Homework (generally) got done, there was time to relax, time to eat and sleep, time to spend doing nothing at all. But I suppose every child feels that way when the bulk of life's heavy lifting is being handled by their parents, or grandparents, or anyone older than themselves.

At least, that used to be my experience.

I don't really think it's a generational thing. I watch my own children now, and I wonder where that extra bit of childhood time went. They don't seem to have enough time in the day to play and just do nothing. Certainly some of the "nothing time" we used to have is now spent doing "something" on the computer, and the television is always a reliable way to remove quality time from the daily schedule. But even so.

My nine-year-old's typical school day is spent like this:

She wakes up, gets her breakfast, and gets dressed, me cracking the whip while repeatedly pointing to the clock. She catches the bus just before 9:00 in the morning and doesn't begin school until 9:15. She spends her day in whatever way it is judged at the school that she should be spending her day, and she comes back through the front door at 4:15 in the afternoon. If there are after-school activities, we must dash madly back out the door so that we are not made late by traffic, of which there is an overabundance in our area, especially at that time of the day, and then we come home again to have dinner, do homework and get to bed, waking up the next morning to do the same thing over again, five days a week, 180 days a year. I happen to be one of those parents who wish summer could be so much longer.

Is that all there is? We do our best not to schedule activities on the weekend so that we can visit with family and friends, take an impromptu road trip somewhere, or just do nothing except housework, shopping, yardwork, go to church, read the Saturday morning Financial Times, have breakfast, lunch, or dinner out on the deck. And all the while, it feels as if we are just barely squeezing ourselves into a contrived state of relaxation. "Relax, will you!"

I can remember two times in my life when the time seemed to keep a sane pace. One, as mentioned above, is my own childhood—and I should mention here that when I was a child, the Blue Laws were still in effect. No shopping or work were to be done, no business to be transacted, no banks open and no such thing as an ATM, though as I recall grocery and drug stores were still open. While these restrictions may have been religious in origin, I don't think they really hurt the average person who had to live with them.

I, being a child without any real responsibility, found Sundays to be rather tedious and boring because there was "Nothing to do!" Much to my chagrin, I remember being glad when they were done away with and we could go galavanting to our heart's content. Oh, the folly! Just the same as I wish I could conjure all those preschool naps I was expected to take and didn't want to, I likewise wish I could have my Sundays returned to me with no expectation that I would hop to it and do whatever was being requested—even damanded—of me. (I'm about this close to enforcing my own Blue Laws for my family!).

The second time I remember feeling that life had slowed down sufficiently was when I home schooled my older two children, one of whom is now in college, the other of whom is doing online high school. We had just bought a house, my husband lost his job six weeks later, we had a baby six weeks after that, and he spent the next nine months searching for a job. Except, of course, for the minor anxiety that a lack of real income will cause in such circumstances, our time was precious. My husband taught the girls their history and spent more time getting to know the newest member of the family than he otherwise could have. And I was able to get rest and get away from the house more than I otherwise would have been able to.

Even when he finally found a job in another city and we spent a year-and-a-half living mostly apart, the time still felt like my own. It's funny how much of your family's time you can reclaim when you take the structured school regimen out of the picture. People would marvel that we were able to live that way for so long. "How in the world are you home schooling with your husband not even around!" I suspect that not having another adult's schedule and agenda to contend with as well was tremendously helpful during this time, to be honest, but we'll make that our little secret.

It is enough to say that once we sold one house and bought a newer one (this time with no yard) in a densely populated area to once again live together—all of us, as a family—time sped up. My older children went to school for a number of years, which sped things up even more, as they rarely went to the same school. Traffic patterns had to be noted or you could easily spend the bulk of your life in the car. Schedules were compressed, short distances became major undertakings and long journeys. Poly-multi-tasking became the order of the day. And you know, when you try to do too many things at once, you never feel like you complete any of them satisfactorily. If you can complete them at all.

A few things have changed over the past year. One of my children has moved on to college, so there is one less agenda to take into account. One has stopped attending the local public high school in favor of online high school. The other two will be at home with me next year, so we may actually be able to return to some semblance of a dignified family life.

We'll see. We've thrown in a community garden plot, maybe a dog and some fish in the near future, and we still have the requisite music lessons, sports, and other childhood occurrences that will continue to ebb and flow over the next several years. But I am hoping that we can usher in a new age of enlightenment, halcyon days of doing what we were created to and truly long to do, to live.