GESENHUES: Where did extra hour go?

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November 5, 2009

Anonymous The News and Tribune Thu Nov 05, 2009, 12:28 PM EST

All weekend, I was looking forward to the extra hour we were getting compliments of daylight savings time. Come Sunday, we would set our clocks back and I’d get an entire sixty minutes all to myself. I spent my Saturday morning making a list of things to do with my extra hour. (I love making lists — it’s kind of a hobby, or OCD symptom. You say to-MAY-toe, I say to-MOT-toe.)

What would I do with a whole hour? I could write. Do my nails. Clean out my refrigerator (that one got nixed as quickly as it got listed). Nap. Read. Work on the Sunday crossword puzzle. Organize photos. Make more lists.

The possibilities were endless. I wanted to spend it wisely. I was fervently aware that come spring of next year, daylight savings time would be taking back her hour (creating the need to make a new list of things to cut from my Sunday routine next March 14th).

Time is an interesting thing. I once saw a guy wearing aT-shirt at a Coldplay concert that said, “Time is a man made concept.” It bugged me the entire show. Man-made ... it’s not real. Time is not real. It was as if somebody had just told me that the earth really was the back of some giant tortoise shell. If time wasn’t real, then what was? I thought, while trying to focus on Chris Martin singing “Clocks.” It was too much to consider on top of him singing about going back home (home, as in the one you can never go back to).

I finally filed the thought in the same box that holds other such questions like, where does the universe end? Or, how many stars are there? And, how does a short-wave radio work. (I know there is actually an answer for that question, but it still blows my mind that sound waves can enter a transmitter, travel thousands of miles through our atmosphere, and come out some random speaker almost immediately).

Right now, one of the books on my nightstand is, “The Principles of Uncertainty” by the artist, Maira Kalman. It’s a beautiful collection of paintings (with some photos) paired with a stream of conscious story that fits together in its own enlightening way. One of the theme’s of the book is extinction and how everything dies; and since everything does come to an end, then what’s the point. But, of course, the point is art; it’s the book itself.

The idea of “what’s-the point-anyway” comes around often in our lives. During the day-in-day-out chores that go along with raising a family, working a job, and keeping a household, it’s easy to get caught in that vicious cycle of confusion and lack of importance.

“Why am I driving to work again, like I do every Monday, wishing I could be still in bed, reading the paper, drinking coffee?”

Even I — someone who loves her job, gets to write a published column; who has the two best kids in the whole wide world along with a loving husband and whole slew of friends to drink coffee with — even I sometimes think, “Why? Why am I doing this again?”

The answer, of course, is because I choose to do it again. This life that I have right now, in this moment in time, is what I have chosen. I drive to work everyday because I want a career and I want certain things that come with having a career. I could choose not to work. And if I made that choice, I wouldn’t live in the house we live, we wouldn’t take the vacations we take, we wouldn’t have the healthcare we have, and my kids wouldn’t get to enjoy the things we provide for them.

And then I remember that time isn’t real anyway. This drive to work is just where I am in my life right now. Like plucking the shoe or the hat from the Monopoly box and placing it on the board, the place I am now is simply a slice of my life. I will have many more slices and they will all fit together in some form or fashion, overlapping, disappearing, or stretching out over days, months, and years (none of which actually exist).

Sunday night, after my husband and I spent the day saying, “Does that clock have the right time?” I found my list of things to do with my extra hour. It was 10 p.m. and we had just gotten our one-year-old to asleep. I still had not folded laundry; I had not written my list of weekly tasks (see a pattern here?); I had not checked my e-mail; I had not done one thing on my list of ways to spend my extra 60 minutes. And, as far as I could tell, that hour was long gone.

It didn’t bother me for too long. I knew that my extra hour didn’t really exist anyway.

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