A QUESTION OF TIME - 16 December 2011
16th December, 2011
I write the date and it looks familiar, someone's birthday perhaps? Three days ago was the 109th anniversary of my father's birthday, or at least the man I grew up thinking was my father. He died at the age of 67. I was 23. I hadn't seen him for 4 years. And then 2 years after he died I found out he was my adoptive father. I remember the day I found that out. But not the date. You'd think you'd remember a date that eventful.
Time. I understand it less and less the more of it I spend. A friend of mine wrote me recently that she tries to stay in the moment as much as possible, that the past and the future are so compelling but one has sadness and the other fear. I'm with her. Although today the moment keeps getting away from me.
Mark time. Waste time. Spend time. Save time. Take time. Lost time.
That first one, mark time, that's what get's us into trouble. Birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas. New Year. I am not in the moment with Christmas. It just doesn't live up to itself or the memories of it. I find myself thinking of childhood Christmases when my imperfect family managed to be perfect for a day - actually 2, I grew up with Boxing Day. Until I was 10 I don't remember a Christmas that let me down. Carol singing in nursing homes and on doorsteps. The fruitcake mother made at the end of October, burying it in a tin of confectioner's sugar, dousing it weekly with a bit of sherry. Then the magic of the last week when it would be coated in marzipan before a thick layer of royal icing was slicked on with a wet palette knife until it's surface glistened. The final coat of icing was applied on Christmas Eve, the icing roughed up with a fork to resemble snow before a snowman and a red robin were plonked down on it, the circumference of the cake graced by a red satin ribbon. The smell of mince pies wafting through the house and on the day itself a goose and a ham with all the trimmings.
This was the day of the year when the budgeted rigidity of my working class family let down its hair. Chocolates, a balsa wood box of dates, clementines, a bowl of nuts and yes, my father roasting chestnuts on the open fire. The house, festooned with streamers, the tree modest and magical. Presents were minimal, my favorite always being a new book from my godmother whom I only met once. Then church and back in time to baste the goose once more before gathering around the radio to listen to the Queen's speech. In the late afternoon, the four of us sitting at a card table in front of the fire, pulling Christmas Crackers and donning the paper hats. Playing board games while munching on a piece of that delicious cake.
Even thought it all fell apart after 10 years, first with my brother leaving home, then my father having an affair and finally my leaving at 16, those early Christmases remain in my mind as the most precious of memories and although I tried valiantly for years with boyfriends, husbands, different sets of in-laws, with my child and step-children, I never achieved what my parents achieved for those 2 days. Of course, the other 363 were pretty much crap in our house, but those 2 days of perfection led me to believe that a happy family was possible to have.
Now my brother lies in hospital, hoping to be well enough to go home for the holidays, where he and his wife have kept our childhood Christmases intact all these years.
Time. No matter how much we try to mark it and measure it, it comes and goes with or without us.
I just ordered Alain de Botton's "How Proust Can Change Your Life," in preparation for reading, with a friend in the New Year, Proust's "In Search of Lost Time." Or as some prefer - "Remembrance of Things Past." I wonder if that's why Alzheimer's is so frightening to many of us. Do we feel that to be unable to remember anything, from mere seconds ago to all the way back to the beginning means that our lives didn't count. One of the first questions doctors ask a patient to diagnose Alzheimer's is "What is the date?" The second question, "Who is the President of the United States?" might be a question most of us in our right minds would rather not remember.
Joel's father had Alzheimers. And what I learned about time from him is that you are who you are even if you don't remember who you are. In those final years, from when his short term memory slipped, until he was in the nursing home in a diaper, he was quintessentially Hy Meyerowitz. His spirit, his life force, his power of communication was always present.
The day before he died I spent an hour alone with him. At this point he had not one memory left and had lost the power of speech. I held is hand and he held mine, his forefinger moving over my skin like a metronome while with his eyes he told me everything left to tell. We were in the moment and it was immeasurable.