Many Faces of Time
“Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all!... his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.” – Charles Dickens (Hard Times)
As I contemplate time, I assume a bird’s-eye view of life and its myriad of descriptors of words and actions. Time lingers, flies, drags, and I can be in time, out of time, and with time. I delve into three dimensions: past, present, and future. At times, my past blemishes my enjoyment of the present or future pursuits. Time represents a universal currency which we can save, spend, and waste. Swimming, hot-tubbing, cooking, and social connections return me to the present when I steer off-course, yet to live only in the present doesn’t always seem like enough. Future plans, travels, and engagements with others energize me.
What is a universal marker of existence for humans, plants, and animals and is measured by hours, days, months, and years? I share time with 7 billion humans, and all the flora, fauna, and sea life around me. I imagine that human considerations about time are very different from those of other living things. As I reflect on time, I recognize it is the most valuable, yet intangible, unseen, and indefinite item. Time is an ethereal element as it is not seen. Time’s physical representations are a watch or a clock, but these objects don’t represent the actual humanity of a person’s passage of time, only a concrete representation of time’s movement ahead.
Why am I focusing on time anyway? The answer rests in a type of muddle and puddle that has followed me in the last twelve years of my compromising vision. From a visual acuity of 20/40 to my current limited visual light and movement perception, this descent carries with it the added baggage of my slowing down to accomplish what others might consider essential or mundane events of the day. Since I travel through fog and blur, and do not possess adequate headlights anymore to illuminate the way, I proceed with caution and decreased confidence in most of my activities. I make choices about how to adapt to these changes; most of the time I remain level-headed, grateful, and appreciative of those who will accompany me through life, particularly my husband, Ted, my daughters, Julia and Eleni, and many of my close friends.
Spending time with myself as a visually impaired person (VIP), entails a mind’s eye awareness and recollection of my environment. The infrequent use of my white cane creates a greater dependency on using my hand to trail walls and grasping handrails when available. Instead, I use the upper right arm of my husband, or a handful of others, so they can serve as a sighted guide. These things are essential since for me to pass time safely, I must size up the terrain of floorplans, obstacles, or spatial relationships to other people, even before I embark on a journey through time. Although on some level a sighted person can gaze around and take in the sensory detail of their environment, I have learned to rely more on my other senses to size up my surroundings.
The element of time comprises a myriad of descriptors and adjectives with it. One variable that I have noticed in my life is how time passes and changes with my mood. When I am happy and engaged, time flies, and when I am low-energy, lonely, or depressed, time lingers, creeps, or slogs. I am more aware of the element of time the more my vision has changed. Ordinary, mundane tasks around the house take much longer and I would drive myself crazy if I compared how long it takes me to empty the dishwasher or do sous-chefing compared to a sighted person. I resist any move on my part to compare my actions as a VIP to the sighted world, since that would only lead to berating or negative comparisons. I find relief and warmth in noting that the twenty minutes taken to unload the dishwasher, fold a load of laundry, or change the sheets on my bed, takes approximately the same amount of time for me and my VIP friends, albeit longer than the sighted world. It has become very important not to criticize myself for not coming out on top of this task contest, but rather to just accept that it is what it is, and be grateful to have my cognitive function, mobility, and arms to fold, hug, peel, and clean. My blind comrade, Tamara’s, concept of time has changed with her guide dog, Portland. She remarks that Portland assists keeping her settled about the passage of time and staying in the moment, since she is not by herself.
One recent Saturday, Ted and I went to Target in Emeryville to look for specific things: he needed a backpack for his Mexico trip, and I wanted some water shoes and some birthday cards. With great sadness, shopping or window shopping no longer brings joy and excitement, but rather confusion and overload, as Ted must explain everything to me, since all items and objects are blurs. If I were to walk into Target, I would have no idea which direction to turn, even with my cane. I must ask salespersons for assistance, which is a challenge since they were sparse. I can no longer identify items unless I touch them. Ted did not find the backpack, only a children’s version, and he meticulously pored through the water shoes arranged on a rack and located a hidden size 7, describing it to me as gray and black. Since there were no chairs, I had to hang onto Ted’s shoulder to try the water shoe on, and I celebrated the fact that it fit. We meandered through the large store and found the stationary department, which had no cards for my friend’s mother who was turning 100-years-old but had 3-4 cards for a nephew turning five. After Ted described the lyrics and images on each, we chose a brightly-colored ice cream cone with five scoops of ice cream, which my nephew will love. I hope he doesn’t begin to lick the card. Without my interpreter, Ted, I could not have located this card. I appreciate my husband’s endless patience and willingness to help me with anything that’s difficult. One current struggle is finding the notch at the bottom of my iPhone to place the charging cord. Another one is plugging electrical cords into the wall socket.
Tasks in familiar environments and/or routinely done are completed more smoothly and quickly than if I’m in a brand new place. In a familiar environment, my comfort level and movements are calmer and fluid, and I get less anxious. The converse is true in unfamiliar environments. Taking a shower at the club runs more smoothly since I know where all three liquid cleansers are, can place my black brush on a ceramic shelf, and move the shower handle up and down as needed. When I’m done, I use the outer aspect of my right hand to trail along walls to arrive at the changing room and lockers. I locate my locker by feel with the straps of my light blue swim bag hanging on the right side and proceed to dry and dress. After 15 minutes, I proceed to the exit of two doors that I can spot by the backplate, which I can still identify since it has a metallic shine in contrast to the white door. After I exit the second door and turn to the left, where my husband is waiting, we proceed to our car via the elevator. Occasionally I leave behind my swimsuit, towel, or swim-cap, which I claim on another day with Ted’s assistance. I recall with humor the time I had not included my brightly-striped beach towel in my bag and needed to dry my entire body with paper towels!
Time belongs to all of us, we just don’t know how much. We can choose to use time productively at work, during exercise, a hike, daydreaming or just relaxing. I have become intrigued with how the passage of time has changed with my loss of vision and comparatively looking at the before and after of completing tasks. Initially when I first thought about low vision and slow vision (this adage relayed to me by another low vision friend) in the same sentence, I anticipated that I would belittle or begrudge myself for the added times that life tasks took, but the opposite has occurred. I have become grateful for and understanding of my need for more time. If I do try to accomplish something more quickly and perhaps more carelessly, then I make mistakes. Case in point, when I came upstairs one day for lunch, my husband discovered that I had on one black slipper and one soft loafer shoe, because they were right next to each other on the floor. I chuckled when he pointed it out, and I replied with the quip, “Two does not make a pair.”
Some areas of home maintenance and cleaning that defy time limits are those tasks I can complete with my eyes closed, like cleaning off kitchen surfaces, doing dishes, and dusting off all the counters in my closet. I use my touch and what we call proprioception to guide me through everything. Occasionally with these tasks, accidents occur, such as clear glass crash, when I’m brushing the counter and I haven’t removed a stemmed wine glass from the counter, and it shatters into the sink.
Yes, my scope of tasks that I complete independently has narrowed. For example, Ted and I painstakingly completed the process of attaching a weighted blanket to its cover for my daughter. Weighted blankets are used by some people to create a greater sense of calm as they sleep. The inner portion may include steel, glass, or polyester beads to create this effect. The blanket, called Sunday Citizen, has buttons on both sides that must be maneuvered to slots of two bindings and then further secured with sturdy ribbons. It took us more than an hour to complete this process, and I could only manage the button into the binding portion while my husband completed it. I washed the outside cover of microfiber in the gentle cycle of my washing machine and placed this very heavy cloth lump into the dryer, where it took probably four hours to dry on low heat. Both my husband and I voiced our frustration with this task, since it seemed like the fingers of 70-year-olds lack the strength and limberness to complete the job, and I was minus my vision, so I could only complete the task by feel.
In my mind’s eye, as I look into my life, I see the periods of loneliness, isolation, and boredom of my early life as slowly passing by. The times of my midlife passed quickly through my roles as a nurse, wife, mother, and friend. Currently, as a woman with low vision and blindness, time passes more slowly, at times with less sense of purpose, with muted and faded visual stimuli, and the need to adapt to new capabilities. I felt that it would be very easy to live inside my head, rather than living in the land of the seeing, but then I am knocked out of that preoccupation when I listen to a book on my Mp3 player.
Connecting with others, especially in pandemic times, provides me with useful measures of time well spent because books serve such a prominent place in my life. My union with others comes in the form of what writers share with me and what I read/listen to. Most books serve a prominent place in my life, my time spent with them becomes as varied as the writer’s message. In the last month, I listened to “The Beauty of Dusk” by Frank Bruni, “The Yellow House” by Sarah M. Broom, and most recently, “A Memory of Violets,” by Hazel Gaynor. Where else does a person vary the terrain of their connections as vividly as with the printed word (which in my case is in the audio-format)? My reading time with the three authors listed above travels the landscape of vision loss in one eye, the loss of a house in New Orleans post-Katrina, and the fictional account of an older sister, Rosie, losing her blind sister, Flora, in the flower districts of London. When my eyelids, rather than closing to darkness, still shine bright light due to macular or retinal dysfunction, I know no other remedy than to return to my audio books.
Even my sense of telling time has changed with my ensuing blindness. Whereas many blind folks use talking wrist watches, I find that since the face is so large, with a wide strap, that they are too cumbersome for me. The clock icon on my iPhone, my talking atomic clock on my nightstand that tells me the date and time when I tap it, or simply asking my trustworthy husband, “What time is it?” has been sufficient for me. It has been at least a year since I have been able to read the 12-inch wall clock hanging over the dryer in the laundry room, with a white face and one-inch black numbers. Now I cannot see the circle face, but I can still hear its repetitive tick that indicates the battery is working.
I was particularly charmed when my writing assistant, Charlie, provided a vivid description of their parents’ cuckoo clock, purchased in the Black Forest in Germany many years ago. It is a large, wooden house mounted on the wall, that sports a vivid scene of German men and women celebrating at a mill. At the half hour mark, the cuckoo bird chirps once, then at the top of the hour, it chirps the hour number then plays a cheerful twinkling, traditional German drinking song. Twirling men in lederhosen and women in traditional dresses circle at the top of the clock and below, two men slam their beer-filled steins at a table. A waterwheel begins to turn, spinning for the duration of the tune. The pendulum clicks along, always keeping in time. I absolutely love the details that Charlie provided about this cuckoo clock, and I insisted that they indulge my excitement by placing it on the page for the reader to enjoy.
There is also time that is not calculated by its passage, but rather just enjoyed, like a most recent dinner event at our house with a few other friends, moving from sparkly bubbly at the couch to an Indian/Asian dinner at the dining room table. When I asked this group about what time means to them, I discovered that they were incredibly interested in pondering this topic. One universal theme uncovered was that the definition and value of time changes with age. One of our friends noted that his 95-year-old mother in New York truly lives only in the present time. If she is asked what happened earlier in the day or what she ate for breakfast, she is lost. Another guest wishes she lives to be 100, with 21 years left on that quest. She set it as a mission to herself to be able to leave her legacy and her deceased husband’s in generous gifts, whether by supporting community music, community gardens, or engineering programs at two local universities, as her husband had a career as an engineer.
As we mused how our perception of time has changed, each of us included that our priorities with time had changed substantially. We discussed our time when we were working professionals concerned with time management, productivity, and completing our occupational goals diligently. Now, as we are in our mid-60s to late-70s, we measure time in a more discerning and experimental manner. Our perceptions of time vary greatly from our years as professionals. All agreed that the cornerstone of time well spent was in the hopefully unbroken links to close friends. I added, and many agreed, that I had minimized the amount of time spent with certain people, such as those who do not reciprocate or do not take time to listen and enquire about the other person’s life. I have recently limited contact with those individuals who only want to hear themselves talk. I find it too wearing and too taxing to engage in these types of friendships. Rather than feeling like my life is just a gravel or trash-strewn road to journey on, I pick up precious nuggets, enjoying their integrity, sparkle, and joy. Perhaps, I even place them in a translucent container that I can pick up and remove from at will. I am now at an age that the state of the world, with global warming, deepening polarization in America, the war in Ukraine, or the Covid-19 pandemic, all coalesce into a greater need to remain focused, to set priorities, and experience my time as a more limited commodity.
My greatest hope is that no matter where or how I am, that my weaving of life continues strong, vivid, and memorable until my last breath. Just as a tapestry may adorn a home or museum wall, I hope the ways in which I lived, whether by memorabilia or shared experiences, can adequately embody my life when I am gone, and I can endure in the collective consciousness.
Kathy Stephanides resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband. She has two grown daughters. Since 2010, Kathy has honed into memoir/essay as a way to make sense of her life, especially with her progressive visual loss to the point of having to leave her forty-year nursing career. She finds that writing gives her catharsis and a sense of meaning in a host of challenges from a traumatic childhood and Retinopathy of Prematurity. She has been published in Uncomfortable Revolution and You Might Need to Hear This.