“Do you have the time?” I inquired of the gallery attendant, knowing I was nearing the closing hour of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
I didn’t care to be the recipient of stern looks for overstaying my welcome.
“5:10pm,” the jovial young man replied. “Just 50 more minutes, and I hope it goes by slowly for you and like that,” with a snap of his finger, “for me! Time’s like that, you know, and I’m ready to go home and see my little girl.” He continued talking as his path and mine trailed apart.
Time. Tis true, it is an elusive creature.
Ask any child (or me) in June to wait until December for something desperately desired and see our brows furrow. Ask a child (or me) to sit still for one whole hour in church and watch us shimmy in those pews like cell phones on vibrate.
But tell us we have only an hour to watch our favorite television program and we can sit as still as stones.
Time is a definitive thing measured in seconds, minutes, hours and days – the same definition for us all – yet I venture to say indefinite in every way that matters most.
Take the Doc, for example. He tells me he cleaned his bathtub “not long ago.”
Really?
In asking him to quantify that, he mumbles something about “six months or so.”
Eew.
Now, ask him how long it’s been since he had a doughnut and he’ll tell you it’s been “soooooo long.” Try three days.
So, six months is not long, but three days is an eternity?
OK, Einstein.
One of the most powerful scenes for me in the movie “Castaway” is when Tom Hanks’ character is in the plane’s lavatory. He is careful examining his thumb, which has a Band-Aid covering a small paper cut. It’s quiet. The camera zooms in. Several seconds are spent watching him grimace as he unwraps the bandage when … Boom! The doors fly open, the cabin pressure has been compromised and he’s hanging on for dear life as the jet is plummets toward the raging ocean.
Oh, Tom, “Bosom Buddies” was never this dangerous!
We’ve all had our moments of boom, no? Moments where we’d give anything to turn back the clock and gladly accept the problems we thought we had 15 minutes earlier. Before the phone rang and changed everything. Before we learned of babes being ill, before spouses said goodbye, before pink slips were received, towers fell and cars crashed.
If Tom had only known from that moment, he’d be struggling to free himself from a briny grave to spend four years on a deserted island, presumed dead. How he’d long for a paper cut, if he’d only known.
But he didn’t, and neither do we.
Perhaps that’s best. Knowing could make us as crazy as Bessie bugs.
Some moments come when the doctor says the “C” word followed by a string of high-dollar medical jargon. Something about lungs, spreading, lesions in the brain, two months.
“You have two months.”
A dear friend of mine heard those words in late December. As the stores were ripping out Christmas decor and hosing down everything in Valentine red and pink, I was saying, “Good gravy, that’s two months away, let’s hold off!”
My friend was saying, “That’s two months away, let’s hold on.”
Still others could say how fortunate one is to have two months. Their losses came in an instant, without an opportunity to say another word to their loved ones.
Two months.
I can’t calculate with any certainty the amount of time I have on this side of the dirt, but I’m pretty sure my minutes are a fixed number. One of my hopes in my quest to downsize and get back to my roots is to maximize that time, whether in reality, perception or both.
Maybe I’ll do something amazing with those hours not spent cleaning more toilets than I need or maintaining a lifestyle that never suited me anyway. Or maybe I’ll spend too many of them binging on Netflix (hellooo, Downton Abbey!) or watching the NFL or staring at Sunset on the River and Jessica Penn in the museum.
Regardless, I hope that when I near my own closing hour, I’ll be grateful for the way I spent my time.
But please y’all, clean your bathtubs at least as often as you have doughnut. I think that’s a rule.
LISA KELLEY IS A WRITER, MASTER GARDENER, ANIMAL LOVER AND ALL-AROUND GOOD OL’ SOUTHERN GAL WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO PRACTICE LAW AND MEDIATE CASES IN DOWNTOWN BENTONVILLE.