I’ve been thinking a lot about time ever since I received the call at 5:55 PM on a Wednesday.
How much time it took me to put on my jacket.
To sprint from my office, down the hall, and out to my car.
To drive across the bridge to Jamestown to be with my stepmother and the EMTs.
And I am amazed at how long each of those minor events stretched out when compared to the infinitesimal amount of time it took for a massive gap to open in our lives, with no time to prepare.
Bob Dylan, dad’s personal poet laureate, wrote:
Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin’ up, we struggle and we scrape
We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape
The lyrics to Mississippi may sound grim, but it’s actually a love song. Despite the piling up of time, despite staying in Mississippi one day too long, Dylan’s protagonist gets the girl in the end.
My father found the time to do that as well when he married Patti and then filled almost twenty-five years with laughter and joy, travel, restoring a house, and then another house, and raising his second brilliant, lovely, compassionate daughter.
Dad found time for each of us as well as for himself. He found the time for the major events and the small touches, the meaningful things, the small gestures, the intentional actions for friends and family. He made sure to take the time…
To discover how to be a parent with me and my sister when he was only a young man himself, and then figure out how to apply those lessons when our youngest sister entered our family
to discover a love for creating sculpture and collage late in his life
To travel around the globe both for work and for play
And to pick up the pen again in the last few months and prepare for the publication of his thirteenth and fourteenth books
He took time to explore his own creativity by following the path of the great Delta blues masters down south
And to go on road trips with his brother, surrounded by tornadoes and art and music
And then dedicate whatever time and effort was needed to try to save the life of a dear friend
He set aside time…
To teach his eldest daughter how to drive a stick shift at Fort Getty in Jamestown
And to instill a love of theatre in me from the very start of my childhood when he worked at Hartford Stage Company
And to encourage one granddaughter’s love of space with a trip to Cape Canaveral
And to build a huge wooden model of the Titanic for his second granddaughter
Even as the months and years passed, he found the time to make Star Trek costumes for his nephews
and send photography books as a surprise to his one of his nieces
And dance at another niece’s wedding
And play flag football at Thanksgiving when I was a kid and just this past November
And create scavenger hunts that led to special books he chose for other nieces and nephews
He loved taking the time to…
Bake custom cakes for special events
Try and fail to replicate his grandmother’s long-lost fudge recipe
And design a playhouse for my then three-year old daughter and then spend a weekend with her and and my youngest sister building it in our backyard
As a member of the volunteer fire department, he kept his boots and overalls by the side of the bed so when the alarm came, he could swing his legs out of bed, into the boots, and pull up his protective gear, all so he could get out the house and to an emergency with no wasted time.
And there was always time to…
Wake up at 3AM to bring us to the point at Ft. Wetherhill to look for Halley’s Comet
Or drive to Burlington unannounced to clean and rearrange his daughter’s apartment as she was grieving a loss, which was just what she needed even though she didn’t know it at the time
And drag me away from my office to meet for lunches over pad Thai and cashew chicken to discuss my writing and his, plus politics and movies and books and family.
I know he would have wished for more time, as we probably all would.
There were more poems to write and sculptures to build
More road trips to plan
Many more years escaping with Patti to the beautiful space they built together in New York
Time to see my youngest sister attain her dreams
Time to beam with pride over his other daughter’s next pop-up book
Time to see what his granddaughters would become
and time to heal relationships that had cracked over the course of time.
I learned so much my father over the last fifty years. We all did.
And at the end, he taught me one final lesson, reinforcing something that I knew in theory.
Time is a finite resource.
It’s like helium or oil. We know, theoretically, that it will eventually run out, but we never really believe that it will happen in our lifetimes or any time soon.
We always think there will be a bit more time to say thank you, I love you, I’m sorry, and hey, it’s been a while so let’s get together for dinner.
And when the time comes to an end, clicking shut like an old-fashioned pocket watch, you’re left wondering what you could have done with all of the empty spaces between those other times when you were doing something else.
But Dad set an example for all of us, about making the most of the time that he had and the time he was able to share with us. And for that time, too short though it was, I will always be profoundly grateful. Thank you, Dad.