Toddy Time

Wow. It's been, like, two years since I wrote anything...at least wrote anything here, on the blog. Where have those two years gone? Things happen so slowly, day to day, and yet, when I look backward at the time I cannot regain, it seems to have slipped through my fingers. And I feel left with nothing--or at least very little--to show for it.

And so now you know, if you didn't already, that my glass of pinot is perpetually half EMPTY. My first thought is never (at least not without great effort) focused on what I have accomplished. And my second thought is rarely focused on what wonderful opportunities might still lie ahead. Those of you who can do that have my genuine envy. I have squandered so many minutes that it leaves me feeling ungrateful and a wee bit sick to my stomach.

But apparently not enough to actually DO anything about it.

Still though, if I am honest with myself, I have done some stuff. ("Check the records," says Bill Murray in "Scrooged"....) We successfully launched our girlchild into her first year of college. Much of my time was poured into her, with activities at school and elsewhere. During her senior year I devoted myself to building her resume, finding scholarships and filling out forms. I do not begrudge the time invested at all.

I also finished another book. This one is historical fiction, and I await an answer from a New York literary agent concerning that project.

The rest of my days were spent cooking and cleaning, exercising and fellowshipping, reading and chatting up our parrot. Every evening I sat down with my husband and a glass of wine, and we talked it out.

Did I squander some time? Yes. I could fairly be accused of pissing some time away. We each get 1,440 minutes every single orbit. Funny how that number, which seems so large for things like car repair bills or cormorants shot in one day during hunting season, feels so, well, minute (as in small) when it's your freakin' LIFE.

And I do recognize, cognitively, that there is much stuff still left for me to do. I do not know what that looks like yet, but I hope and pray I will be open to opening the door, when those opportunities knock. There will be more assignments for this old gal, and more decisions to be made, and more pinot to be drunk as my husband and I mull over the events of the last 1,440 minutes each evening.

We all must make our peace with the accounting of our days, because each second that ticks off will not return. The only "return" I may ever see will be based on how I invested that time. Some days it is a good investment just to sit with my girlchild on my lap and breathe in the scent of her hair. Other days a good investment might look like making a batch of ambrosia for a certain neighbor who has been an angel to her mother-in-law. Ambrosia is what angels eat, after all. Often it is just taking a breath and having a chat with God, about someone who has suddenly crossed my mind.

At my moment of judgment, will I be called to justify how I chose to spend my time? I do not know. (I trust He will not see my woefully inadequate self at all, but His own son in my place. I'm putting a lot of eggs in that basket.) Will He look straight at me, through me, seeing my soul and my good intentions and my faults and inadequacies and bad judgment calls and just plain laziness, and accuse me of pissing my life away? I cannot say. But one thing I've learned in 25 years of evening toddy time with my husband:

I have drunk enough wine to know that one man's piss is another man's pinot.