Time

My watch battery died about two years ago. I haven't replaced it yet, and so go without a watch. I read somewhere that watches are becoming more and more status symbols as their actual utility declines: who needs a watch when your cellphone, laptop, iPod, Blackberry, etc. all flashes the time at you as a matter of course?

In the course of a day, there is, in fact, very little that depends on a strict adherence to schedule--other than getting into and out of class, and attending the occasional meeting, my workdays are stretches of flowing time, broken up by interests rather than appointments and obligations. I actually found that I didn't much care what time it was, most of the time. When I teach, I can check the time on the classroom clock; to make sure I get there on time, I glance up at the corner of my laptop screen. Even my office phone just silently tells time while it waits to ring, or to be dialled. Every hallway in my building has a clock, and the circulation desk at the library has two.

The longer I went without a watch, the less I found myself wondering what the time was.

Until I got pregnant, of course. Then it wasn't a constant checking of the progress of the minute hand, or even the hour hand. I constantly tapped out a calendrical rosary on my fingertips: months and weeks of gestastion accomplished, portion of pregnancy elapsed, trimester milestones attained or approaching.

Minute-time arrived with Miss Baby, a warping of my time-sense: she's been crying for an hour, or maybe one minute. She's been asleep for only twenty minutes! Or was that an hour? When did she eat, or better yet, when did I? "She's two and a half weeks old," I somewhat blearily, if proudly, told a friend of my mother's. "Mimi!" my mom admonished, "She's 17 days old! Two and a half weeks. Sheesh!" (My mom is the kind of person who says sheesh when provoked in ways like this.) I counted days and weeks, I counted hours and minutes: naps, feeding, growth, maternity leave, days until the weekend, minutes at the breast. I became obsessed with knowing exactly what time it was. If I couldn't see the clock on Pynchon's side of the bed when I got up at night, I got angry. We put a clock in Miss Baby's room, so I could watch the time pass as I rocked and rocked. Somehow, if I knew she fed from 3:07 until 3:18, that made getting up so much more bearable: if I could name it, I could control it?

Still, now that she's getting older--almost 1!--we're settling into an easier routine, one with softer targets and gentler rhythms: we get up 6:30-7:30-ish; we get to daycare 9-10-ish, and come home 5-ish. Whatever. I find, though, that I'm able more to enjoy our time in the evening, when work and daycare are done--there's nothing left but dinner, and bath, and bed, and that all flows without too much effort. I'm a little more stressed in the morning, even though we're really not on a strict schedule. I'm still driven by a forward momentum that can't help looking at the clock.

Pynchon goes back to work in three weeks--a real office gig, you know, the kind where you have to show up at a particular time and stay put for a certain number of hours. I wonder what our time will feel like then?
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And speaking of time, I'm sorry if I haven't been around to your place lately--I'm getting caught up tonight. Work's been very intense, and I've been spending whole days on the internet, and coming home to paint windows in the garage before conking out in bed. Whoops.