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Since
October, I've been working hard at not marking the
passage of time. On a small scale, of course, this
is impossible. I have to know what day it is, and
what time, so I can make it to meetings and keep
tasks under deadlines. But while I've had to mark
days and hours, I've been fairly successful at
ignoring the accumulation of weeks and months. To
do otherwise, would make my time here pass much too
slowly.
Some
here are of a different school of thought. On their
computers they install screensavers that display
their deployment as a pie graph. They know at a
glance right down to the second how much time they
have left. It has been my experience that these are
not cheerful people. Not at least, until just a
sliver on their graph represents their time
remaining here.
There
is a repetitive quality to our days. The most often
alluded-to film is, without a doubt, Bill Murray's
Groundhog's Day, in which he plays a man doomed to
relive the same day over and over again, until he
gets it right. Someone referred to Groundhog's Day
Syndrome yesterday, and I made the obligatory
response, but I've recently finished a book that
shows me just how good we have it here, and what
little we have to complain about. The book is
called Endurance.
In
1914 Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 sailed in
the Endurance to attempt to cross the continent of
Antarctica. They sailed halfway around the world,
and through 1,000 miles of ice, maneuvering with
painstaking caution to avoid colliding with jagged
formations that could tear the bottom out of their
ship and send them to the bottom.
In
the center of the ice pack, a cold snap joined the
millions of bits of ice into one solid mass with
the Endurance frozen firmly in its center. They
were stuck fast for 9 months, part of which was the
dark polar winter. With the Antarctic Spring came
warmer weather which, far from being a relief,
brought with it greater danger than subzero
temperatures. The ice began to thaw and separate.
Miles away, wind at the edge of the pack sent
pressure waves through the flow, causing multi-ton
pieces of ice to grind against each other. For
days, the silent world of Shackleton and his men
was filled with the unearthly sounds of groaning,
shrieking, cracking ice.
The
pressure in the ice bent and twisted the Endurance,
and snapped her timbers. The men removed life boats
and stores from the ship and set up camp on a large
piece of ice. In a matter of days, the ship was
crushed and sank. For the next five months, the men
suffered subzero temperatures at best. At worst,
the weather warmed, and their world melted. They
were never dry. They had nothing to place over the
ice on which they slept, so their clothes and their
reindeer-skin sleeping bags were constantly
absorbing water.
Day
after day, as their iceberg drifted north, it
diminished in size. There was nothing for them to
do. Nothing to occupy their minds, nothing to do
for exercise. Five months. It is a testament to the
men's remarkable strength of character and
Shackleton's ability as a leader that nobody lost
their mind. Nobody killed anyone else. In fact,
there was only one argument recorded in any of
their diaries.
That's
only half the story. It gets worse from there, and
it's a long time getting better. Ultimately though,
Shackleton brought all his men home alive. It's a
fantastic book, even if you're not marooned in a
desert when you read it.
Most
of the men in the story took a view similar to
mine, as far as time is concerned. They remained
aware of it overall, but tried not to mark it too
closely. The problem with this approach, if taken
over a term of any length, is that holidays are
impossible to ignore. Christmas wasn't bad. It was
almost possible to acknowledge it while at the same
time ignoring its place in time, but I find New
Year's Eve will not allow that. I suppose it's
because the event is itself, all about time, so
every discussion of it revolves around the past
year, and what we hope the coming year will
bring.
So
I find myself, after months of trying not to,
thinking about time, its passage, and how we mark
it. I'm sure the past year has marked its passage
on me, but I lack the objectivity required to say
how. To my eye, it's left no evidence of its
passage on my wife. The only indication that a year
has passed is that I find I depend upon her more
and understand her slightly better (but love her no
less, for the diminished mystery.)
The
place where time has most dramatically shown its
effect has been my children. Whereas the passage of
time is often marked by melancholy, in this case it
is characterized by joy. Our son has grown several
inches and has kept the sweetness of personality
that set him apart as a toddler. He lost his first
tooth this year, started (home) school, and piano
lessons. He caught a big, fat bass and delighted me
a thousand times with his observations of things I
had long since forgotten to notice.
Our
daughter has evolved into a lovely little girl. Her
beauty is matched only by her orneriness. I think I
will have little to fear when she reaches courting
age. Any man who is undeterred by the disdainful
curl of her lip will have the heart of a lion. This
year saw her fling herself countless times headlong
into the swimming pool. Most of the time I was
there to catch her. She developed an enormous
vocabulary, seemingly overnight, more and more of
which I am actually able to understand when we talk
on the phone. She also grew like a weed, and now
has to be watched constantly, lest she sneak into
her big brother's room and steal his clothes. She
has grown into quite a handful this year, and she
has secured even more, her grasp on her daddy's
heart.
It's
been a much busier year than that summation would
suggest, but those are the things that come to mind
when I try to figure out where the time has gone.
Weighed against the value of a year, I'd say I've
gotten quite a bargain.
I
won't speculate on what the coming year holds. I'll
only say that I hope to spend every bit of it with
my family and with you, my friends.
God
bless, and Happy New Year.
Steven
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CS
member Pete in Saddam's Big Chair
(click for a larger image)
No
matter how you gild it, it's still an outhouse
(click for a larger image)
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