Did you know that until the late 1800s, communities all over the United States determined their own time? There were more than 300 different time zones in our country alone! Cities and towns set their clocks by the sunrise and sunset — so not only did the time change place to place, but it changed throughout the year. When rail travel became popular, this wreaked havoc with the train schedules. So everyone was forced to adopt a standard.
When I stumbled upon this trivia recently, I was not as surprised as you might expect. You see, I realized several years ago that time is relative. In fact, sometimes I feel like my own household has multiple time zones. Or dimensions. Or not-so-parallel universes.
Let me explain.
One might think that three people living in a single 2,300 square foot house would all be on the same clock. Mais non, it turns out there is a lot of room for interpretation.
We may all agree that it's 11:45 pm, for example. But, while the grownups equate this with "Late," the teenager protests that it's "Not." While I may be aghast that the reading for AP U.S. History isn't done yet, that same teen assures me that (a) she has plenty of time and (b) I am "so" overreacting.
Weekends present similar anomolies. Four days off for Rosh Hashanah (thank you, תודה רבה, all our Jewish friends) might seem like a liberal amount of time for rewriting a particular analysis of Virginia Woolf's Death of a Moth. Why then do Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday pass us by without so much as a book cracked, a pen put to paper, or a finger on a keyboard? Why were we, once again, wide awake and thoroughly stressed out late the night before the edited paper is due?
Oh wait, my bad. It wasn't "Late."
I'm old. I'm tired. I would go to bed at about 9:00 each night if I had my way. My daughter and I will have to disagree on the definition of "Late."
But, how about more relative terms like "Now," "Soon," and "Later?"
When I ask, "Can you please put your backpack away now?" I mean "Now." As in, "This very instant in the time and space continuum." I don't think I'm alone in this either. Merriam-Webster defines that harmless three-letter word as "at the present time or moment."
When my daughter hears the word "Now," she interprets it differently. "Now" means "Some time ... later ... maybe ... if you feel like it."
Of course, like time itself, the concept of "Now" is endlessly changeable. When my daughter wants/needs/absolutely-has-to-have something, the word takes on all sorts of urgency.
Maybe the discrepancy is because of where we are in our own relative lives. She's still fairly new at this, while I've almost certainly moved past my own halfway mark. Maybe time flies a little (or a whole lot) when you're middle-aged. I bemoan how fast my daughter's growing up. She bemoans having to study for Physics. Somehow six hours with that textbook feels longer to her than the last six years did to me.
Then again, why do I assume that my interpretation of time is the correct one? Albert Einstein asserted that "Time is an illusion." He said that "The separation between past, present and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."
So, maybe my daughter's an Einstein after all. Who knew?
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
As a feminist myself and — especially — as the mother of a teenage daughter, I get emotional when it comes to women's rights. Depending on the situation, I may feel anger, disappointment, sadness, rage, incomprehension. I'm rarely neutral.
It boggles my mind that my sixteen-year-old will likely face economic, political and health care discrimination, social prejudice, maybe even physical danger because of her gender. In this country, in this day and age? A half a century after the women's rights movement? Nearly a century after the 19th Amendment gave us the right to vote?
It boggles my mind.
I was one of those women who felt personally injured when Hillary was forced to pull out of the 2008 presidential race. (And I'll be first in line to cast my vote for her in 2016 if all goes well.)
Women still make less than men for the same work. The statistic commonly cited is 77¢ to the dollar. This accuracy of this is widely debated, but I don't think anyone would say there's parity.
Only 20% of U.S. Senators are women, and only 18.5% of the U.S. Congress. And, as I've already bemoaned, we have yet to have a woman in the White House. In this particular category, the United States is lagging behind. According to www.guide2womenleaders.com, there are currently 32 women ruling other countries. These include: 2 Queens, 3 Governor Generals, 15 Prime Ministers, 11 Presidents and a Captain Regent.
And, let's not even get into CEOs. For every high-powered female Sheryl Sandberg, Virgina Rometty or Oprah Winfrey, there are at least 10,000 male CEOs (and about 1,000,000 thwarted female executives). We hear about the exceptions, not the rules.
I could go on all day, but I'd rather celebrate a rather exciting development. This week, TIME magazine published it's annual "100 Most Influential People In The World" issue. An unprecedented number — 41! — of the influencers included are women.
I love seeing so many women of every age, from every sphere. I love it that this isn't some manufactured (and thereby diminished) "Best Women" list — that the women were judged alongside their male counterparts.
They range from teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai and golf champion Lydia Ko, to notable women up into their sixties. Hillary Clinton's there (of course), but so is Donna Tartt, Alice Waters, Beyoncé, Megan Kelly, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Many familiar names, many new ones. As I read their bios, I am lost in wonder, admiration and pride.
Women do not control their share of wealth. They do not control their share of political authority. In some places (and sadly, in some parts of this country), they don't even control their own reproductive health. But, hallelujah, they can influence this world.
TIME explained it this way: “Power is a tool, influence is a skill; one is a fist, the other a fingertip.”
Here's to us, our mothers, sisters and daughters (especially our daughters). Power be damned. May the reach of our fingertips continue to grow.
Imagine you're saying "Goodbye" to the person you love as they leave you forever. You're standing on the runway, while the plane's propellers start to spin. It's foggy, dawn is just breaking and you're both wearing classic Burberry trench coats and fedoras. Very Casablanca. The nice French gendarme warns you that the plane is leaving in two minutes. You have two minutes.
Now, think about sitting in a dentist's chair. The maniacal-looking man in the white coat leans forward with a piece of machinery that looks like nothing so much as a torture device from the series 24. "Relax," he tells you. He's going to drill, he tells you. He's going to drill for the next two minutes. You have two minutes.
Just how relative is time?
As the mother of a fourteen-year old, I am here to tell you that time is completely, utterly, totally subjective. It can fly by when you want it to linger. It can stand stock still when you need it to move along. And, time can mean very different things to different people. Even people with, purportedly, the same DNA.
My daughter, like most of her peers, doesn't wear a watch. Oh, she owns plenty of them, but she doesn't wear them. Even if she needed or cared to know the time (which, trust me, she doesn't seem to), she always has her iPhone with her. Apparently, wearing a watch brands you as someone who actually lived before smart phones ran our entire lives.
But, to wear or not to wear a watch isn't really the question. My daughter and I, regardless of what is on our wrists, are living in separate parallel universes in which time itself is flexible. A minute for me may be an hour for her and vice versa.
When I ask my daughter to do something — clean her room, put away a dirty dish, bring her laundry up, start her homework — she invariably says "Uh-huh." (Translation: "Yeah, yeah.") And yet, she doesn't move. If I have been naive enough to leave her after making my request, I can pretty much guarantee that she'll do what I asked ... um ... never. Meanwhile, if I stay and stare at her pointedly or add the simple syllable "Now," I get all sorts of attitude.
Hello!?!? I wouldn't be such a nagging nag if she didn't make me nag by not doing what I need her to do without my nagging! Sheesh!
The same holds true if I want her to stop doing something. "Put the phone down." "Turn off your computer." "Put the cookies back; dinner's almost ready." I get the same semblance of compliance: "Uh-huh." But she moves at her own sweet pace and actually ceases and desists when she's good and ready. Which is ... um ... never. Unless, again, I become the shrill monster-mother-from-the-black-lagoon that she already knows me to be. (Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!)
Then, of course, the ultimate response to either of these (and myriad other) scenarios is "All right, all right. I'm doing it. Calm down already."
Would you like to see a mother blow her proverbial top? Stick around.
Time really stands still when my daughter stops at Starbucks after school. It also stands still when I pick her up at the stable. Well, not really, I guess. But, while the seconds and minutes (and hours unless I stop the insanity) tick by, my daughter doesn't seem to notice. I, on the other hand, am expected to put myself into some sort of sci-fi suspended animation until she's ready to leave.
These things drive me crazy. But the truth is, no matter how you measure it, time is flying by too fast. My daughter is about to leave middle school. She is growing up and growing away from me more and more every day. When I am tempted to rush her ("We are so late, turn off the TV right NOW!"), I should stop myself. There will come a time, I know, when I will miss everything about her. Even her procrastination, her attitude and her otherworldly sense of time.
It's like that old Jim Croce song: "If I could put time in a bottle." And, if I could, I probably wouldn't spend it nagging.
