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What We Will Do When Time Starts Moving Again
Don’t ask me what I did this past week. It would tax my pandemic brain to tell you. I know I was busy from the time I awoke to the time I went to bed. I’m certain I kept up on daily chores and important routines, like cleaning the kitchen and exercising. I made an effort to tackle the never-ending tasks like e-mail and social media. I’m pretty sure I made a little progress on some of my larger projects.
But on Wednesday, at the end of another long day at home, I sat down to relax and said to my husband, “Wait, wasn’t I just here? Wasn’t I just sitting on this couch reading last night? Don’t you feel stuck in time?”
In movies when characters are stuck in time, they literally freeze. It’s only the heroes (and sometimes the villains) who can walk among them with purpose and motion. When I was younger, I would’ve been quick to cast myself in the role of hero, the person who could still take action when no one else could, the person who would save the world. It’s a bit unsettling to realize in middle age I feel more like one of the frozen.
Some days I wish I were that character sitting motionless on the train station bench reading a book, oblivious to all the chaos going on around him. Other days I wish I were the woman stuck waving happily at a new arrival as if all is sunny and good. Some days, I’m more like the…
