Waking up From Lost Time

Some epileptics have what's called "absence seizures" where they just sort of space out for a few seconds. Some people with mental illness suffer from bouts of "lost time." Some alcoholics have blackouts.

I recently discovered that I could very well be an epileptic mentally ill alcoholic. I haven't been diagnosed with any form of epilepsy, but I'm knocking real hard on the door of the other two.

I rarely know what the date is without looking at a calendar. Now, it's not at all uncommon for a perfectly sane person to be off by one day or so. But lately, I have not even been able to pin it down somewhere within a good seven to 10 day timeframe. I'm a little better at knowing what month it is, maybe because the month boxes on my "year-at-a-glance" wall calendar are good bit bigger than the day boxes. While I have trouble with dates, I do a little better with knowing what day it is, only because Tuesday is recycling day, Wednesday is American Idol, Thursday is The Office, and Friday is trash day. But bear in mind that this doesn't mean I will actually drop off the recycling on Tuesday, or have the trash out in time on Friday. I do know that the year is 2009, however.

Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm a slacker who cannot afford to be a slacker. I end up putting more effort into looking like I keep it all together rather than just keeping it all together in the first place. So I must not be a true slacker, seeing as how I actually care about keeping it all together. Real slackers don't give a shit about things like recycling day.

All this to say, I recently realized that a good month of my life has gone by without my attention or appreciation. Not that this hasn't happened several times before. It just seems that now, time is more valuable. It's that perspective you grow into the older you get.

When you're a child, you're on the floor with no sense of time and no horizon in sight. As a teenager, you're in the car with no sense of anything and no end in sight. In college, you can see the world from a 4th floor dorm room or from the roof of a fraternity house. It's all books and booze, love and lust, then probably just more booze and lust. Too busy living from one high to the other to notice the shrinking world below. Then comes career. Suddenly, you are supposed to act like a grown-up and take an elevator to a high-rise office or supervise young employees below you. Too busy working to hear the clock ticking minutes of your life away or to see the once endless sea of opportunity beginning to dry up. You settle into marriage and before you're ready (because no one ever is) along come the babies with all the crying and diapers and bottles and equipment. Sleepless, cranky, no-longer-just-a-couple parents hop on that roller coaster and stay on it until the last one starts school. With all the carseats and potty training and paraphernalia, you don't have much time to sit back and reflect on creating a new generation, much less on preparing to shift upward one day and take the place of your parents.

Now that my kids are a little older and for the most part, capable of bathing, feeding, and wiping themselves, I recently had the pleasure of stopping (just once for a fleeting moment) to take a breath and think. I see them looking up at me and I remember how my parents always seemed so tall. I see them looking up to me with wide eyes at a big world and I can only hope they'll see me as the smart, successful, and secure woman I sometimes so deftly can pretend to be.

The mirror and my aching bones are beginning to convince me that even though I may not think or act in accordance with some standard (of mysterious origin) as to how someone my age should think or act, I am nevertheless as young as I can possibly be at this very moment. Time flies when you're getting old, and I really don't want to lose any more of it. Not that I really missed anything over the past month or so. That I know of.

The only thing everyone on earth has in common is that we are all still alive. It's just that most are either too young to notice it or too busy to appreciate it. I'm now getting old enough to notice. I just wish I weren't always too busy to appreciate it, what with all my TV shows and household chores to keep up with.