SOLSCMarch 22: Where Does the Time Go?

            A friend in my age group (post-80) and I were commiserating yesterday about how we have no time anymore. And here is one reason why.

            I have spent almost 40 minutes the past few days double-checking that my primary doctor got the report on my routine mammogram and sonogram. The tests were three weeks ago. On Monday I called my doctor's office to verify that she'd gotten the results (the tests were not done in the same hospital system that my doctor is attached to). Four days later a nurse in the doctor's office called me back to say they had not gotten them. Today I spent some time finding both the phone number of the site that did the tests and the fax number for my doctor. Then I called the site where the tests were done, had to wait through what seemed endless choices from the recording that answers the phone and finally spoke to the person who sends the reports. She said the report had been sent the day after the tests were done (she had the correct fax number), but she would send again. Then I called the doctor's office to alert them to look for the faxed results. The person answering the phone said she’s be on the lookout and would call me that they were received. She kept using the word “uploaded,” and I had to remind her that faxing and uploading are different methods, and this report was coming via fax.

            (I’m having trouble writing something every day. There just doesn’t seem to be any time!)

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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 22 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

May Golden Shovel poem #9

source: Where Will Our Masks Go Now?

 

She searches for the moment where

Time slows, quickens, reverses. She will

Wrap time in knots, hopeing our

Need for certainty masks

A deeper need for time to

As far as imagination can pop now.

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I’m continuing to use Terrance Hayes’s Golden Shovel poem format, as proposed by the Sunday New York Times "At Home" section, for 30 Poems in 30 Days during National Poetry Month.

 

Take a newspaper headline that attracts you.

Use each word in the line as the end word for each line in your poem.

Keep the end words in order.

Describe the story that the headline is for.

The poem does not have to be about the same subject as the headline that creates the end words.

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Memorial Time

            I’ve finished writing up my comments about J. and now I’m getting feedback from my writing groups and friends. Now I am gathering together other comments from friends who aren’t able to come to the memorial this week, and also putting together what librarians call “ephemera,” materials like the newspaper clips my husband wrote as a reporter, letters he wrote to friends that they saved, family memorabilia, as well as a large matteboard of photographs.

            While doing all of this work, I felt myself slipping into a relationship with time rather like that I felt when I was pregnant with my daughter, 44 years ago. It feels like this period of time is outside the usual stream of minutes-hours-days passing always in one direction. This “memorial time” feels static, not moving, containing within it all the time J. and I were together but all lumped together.  One moment of time holding all of our moments, which I could bury myself in if I chose.

            I want to be there... yet I don’t, I can’t. I can’t stop living, I have to keep moving forward along with everyone else. Yet somehow I want to keep a connection to that parallel memorial time. Just to touch it, touch him, now and then. 

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It’s the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, hosted by the wonderful people over at Two Writing Teachers! Every day this month, hundreds of writers will be posting their stories. Head on over and check out the other slices!