Savagemama

Teeny, Tiny Challenge on Time

By Jennifer Savage, 10-11-07

When I landed in Eugene, Oregon at 23 ready (I thought) to embark on graduate school I wondered what my classmates might be like. Here’s what I knew to be true from the information packet I’d received: there would be six of us, all women, from all over the country. One woman had been a teacher in Samoa, one had an English degree, one was moving from New York where she’d worked as a book editor, one was coming from the best journalism school in the country and one worked with at an alternative high school.

As a whole they seemed like world traveling, smarty-pants and scary deal makers, far older than me, and, I was sure, wiser. I was a newspaper reporter from the South with an affection for southern literature. On paper, they terrified me. The morning we were to meet I was so nervous that I went for a 10-mile run before orientation to try and quell my nerves. When I arrived I saw four other women about my age who looked as uneasy and uncertain as I felt. I quietly matched their faces to the bios I’d read and stopped holding my breath. About 15 minutes into a speech from the graduate school director everyone turned to the creak of the door opening. A tall woman with wavy hair and stood to face everyone. She was late and she looked a little taken aback by everyone staring at her. After a few uncomfortable seconds we realized she was our sixth. In a pair of Patagonia shorts and a t-shirt, our book editor had arrived. This just might be okay, I thought.

We spent the next two years in writing workshops together. We treaded lightly at first but by the end we could tell each other to cut paragraphs, rework sentences, that a metaphor was overused or that the last line of a piece as sappy, cliché. When they spoke, I wrote down what they said. I still do.

I see these women about once a year now. Today we are not the angsty 20-something writers we were when we first met that day eight years ago. Now we’re angsty 30 something writers with houses, husbands and babies. We have careers, go to Costco and still try to make writing as close to the center of life’s bullseye as possible. It’s not always easy. So when I get an email like I did this week from one of them with a “teeny, tiny challenge” to write on “time” I take it seriously. Here’s what I came up with…

Time is a day of tough conversations with my boss, an uber professional banker, the store clerk who sounded less than convincing when she asked, “How can I help you?” Time is loose curls in blue eyes. Time is the space between night and day, your arm around my middle. It’s “How was your day?” It’s “I miss you too.” Time is sitting in a hospital in the South. It’s 105 degrees. It’s the slow crawl from Dr. Phil to Oprah on the waiting room television while my grandmother lies chest cut and cracked, heart laid raw and bare to a doctor’s trained hands. Does he know how important she is? Does he have any idea?

Time is 15 minutes every two hours to stand by her side, hold her swollen hand and watch a computer screen detail her heart beat, oxygen levels, her consciousness. The computer says she’s alive. I’m not so sure. Time is the Chicago Marathon stopped after three hours due to heat. Time is the shocking realization I ran that marathon 10 years ago. Time is a three-minute shower, five minutes to myself. It’s 10 minutes until she wakes up. It’s four teeth on top, two on the bottom and spaces between all of them. It’s the girl in the taco line who is locally famous because someone made a movie about her a few years ago when she was 14. It’s her overbite and a long line on a Friday night. She passes the time singing “Don’t Stop Believing” with the blaring radio, her friend and then the guy making burritos. It’s the sweatband around his teenage head as they sing the chorus together before takes her order. Time is the tick tock of her hips as she walks out into the night.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.