Seeds in Your Pocket
One morning in early October, I stepped out of the house, checking my watch as I did. But why check it? I had no appointment—just errands. More important than the hour was the mental list forming in my head. Then I jumped ahead to my classes. What would I do with my 3:45 group? With the two kids at 4:45? With the single child at 6:00?
It seemed incredible that Wednesday had come already. Time flies when you’re having fun, but it also flies when new tasks are piling up faster than the old ones can be cleared away. Afternoon arrives too soon. And so does the next day. Who signed for all these deliveries? Hold back, please.
That morning, to make sure I didn’t overlook something, I made a mental inventory of the tasks for the rest of the week and tentatively assigned each to a day. I hardly had enough days left. Then my mind returned to my three afternoon classes.
The three students in the first class of teens were not going to be any bother. The second class of two 10-year-olds had gone well so far, so nothing to worry about there. It was the single child in the third class who was troubling me. She was much on my mind. It felt like I had just got through a class with her, and here the next meeting was looming! She was very shy, and it seemed likely she would have preferred classmates to observe and learn from, staying out of the spotlight herself.
But she had none so far. Would she quit before another child enrolled? What was the best plan for keeping her interested until then—some problems to occupy her mind or games to entertain her? I had never taught her before, but I could tell she was sharp, though so excessively shy that her answers were all whispers, and role-playing seemed out.
I shook my head, thinking about her big eyes and tiny voice. Compare class with her to my Tuesday-Thursday group. No comparison!
I tried to recall exactly what we’d done in that other class, but I couldn’t remember. Then I focused. What had I done? I drew a blank. Often when mentioning the weather in class, students and I discover that none of us can recall the weather of just the day before, much less from the weekend. That was how the previous day’s classes had sunk from view—swirled into endless, indistinct mixes of grammar exercises, readings, and discussion questions. Rain, cloud, and wind.
What about the other class of two teens? I couldn’t remember what I’d done with them either. I stopped mid-stride, then turned around, as if I’d heard someone behind me call out my name. But it was no good—not a clue about any of my classes. Or about how I’d spent Tuesday morning either. Or the drive home. What I’d done afterward, whether I’d tucked into my novel or answered an email.
I slowed my footsteps.
In fact, I could remember nothing of the day. I looked around, as if unsure suddenly of my whereabouts. Had I entirely forgotten the day, gone through it like an automaton, registered nothing? This was worrisome. You don’t want the past to haunt you—you don’t want to obsess about bygone errors or difficult moments. But you want to remember something of it. You want a souvenir, and not for an entire day to disappear as if swallowed whole. “Hey! Who ate the last slice of bread? Who drank all the coffee?” you might ask one morning. Usually, the answer is that you did. You just don’t remember.
I looked up and down the street where I stood. A line of semi-attached houses on one side, each the mirror image of the house beside it, little garages or little gardens between each residence and the next pair. Pitched roofs, painted cream or brick red, pale green or brown. And there, taking in my surroundings as if I’d just fluttered in and landed on earth, I saw that I hadn’t, after all, lived a day without noticing it. Rather, I had thought I’d lived it without bothering about the crumbs that should have lingered, the taste of those experiences. I had convinced myself that I didn’t remember it because it wasn’t worth remembering. I had dismissed it, thinking it so inconsequential in my busy life that I could just skip it. Already Wednesday! I had thought. How the days fly by!
But no—here I was now, safely ensconced in Tuesday, set back 24 hours to true time.
Yes, I had just had 24 hours returned to me after I had thoughtlessly misplaced them. Have you ever found a $10 bill tucked into a drawer corner or hidden under a notebook? You’re delighted to find the money, not spent, after all. In the same way, it was rather wonderful to find my unused day. I again had it to enjoy, to benefit from. Still astonished at the error, I returned home—arriving on Tuesday when I had for all intents and purposes set out on a Wednesday. Marvelous!
I think that makes a funny story in itself.
But there’s more.
When I arrived at the park adjacent to my lane, I saw my elderly neighbor seated on a bench with the young caretaker who spends mornings with her. How are you, I asked. With her usual slow-dawning smile, my neighbor said she was just fine. Then she told me her foot hurt. A heel spur had kept her awake all night. I commiserated.
She continued. She’d had this trouble once before, and the doctor had cured her.
Then back to that doctor, I said.
She laughed and leaned forward. “Do you know what I told him? ‘It doesn’t do to get so old.’” Tener tantos años is the Spanish expression: have so many years. “Do you know what he told me? ‘Let the years pass.’” She made a gesture with her hand as if inviting something to hurry by. “Let them pass.”
It was a play on words—pass meaning both go by as in accumulate and go by as in get past or around an obstacle. The old woman was inviting the years to hurry by, get ahead, leave her behind. She didn’t need those years. Pass on by!
Because of my strange morning experience of losing a day and then recovering it whole, I knew that letting the days slip away might not be the best idea. Better to grab them and retain them—to have them, as the Spanish idiom says.
Maybe there is some happy middle ground where you have not lost any years but haven’t accumulated a burden either. I wasn’t so sure years do pass by so lightly. Despite my neighbor’s foot and her memory of the doctor who cured her so long ago, I think those intervening years are somewhere, like seeds in her pocket, half dried but full of potential still, almost magical, waiting to be set free, grow, and bloom all over again. Her part turns a funny story into an excuse to wonder.
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