A Year Gone By

Time ain't a thief, she's a giver.

Hi friends,

Here on the west side of Los Angeles we’re in the thick of summer which means — rather annoyingly — perfect weather. Slightly cool mornings and evenings, never too humid, bright, hot sun for a few hours in a cloudless blue sky. As an East Coast baby, I know the “thick of summer” should be just that: thick. Muggy, overwhelming, blanching. A cacophony of crickets and tree frogs during long hot nights and the feeling of a fan on the skin helping, sort of.

Seasons help to mark the passage of time for us, for animals, and for plants. And one of universal marks of human existence is the periodic practice of marveling at that passage of time—our understanding of it, our experience with it, and our relationship to it. My, how it flies. My, how it drags. Damn.

Yesterday was my son’s first birthday which was also, in a way, mine, marking my first year of matrescence. In our earliest years, the clarity that we share a birthday with the person who birthed us is potent. It was obviously a thing we did together, and there was no other way. He came alive earth side at the exact moment that I came alive earth side as something: a mother.

As time spins months and years by, we cleave. His birthday will become more just his, as my own birthday is now “mine.” But really, it will always be ours.

Last year at this moment, I was up at 2am feeling like absolute shit. I meditated and cried and knew what was coming. My son would be born, many weeks before I expected. I had emotionally prepared myself for him to be an August Virgo but instead he was to be a July Leo. IYKYK.

I sat down and started writing about going inside — pratyahara.

“As with the experience of death, in the experience of birth we somehow always seem to think that we’ll have more time. I do, I did. And then you realize the time to go inside — wherever your inside is, you’ll know — is here and nothing is quite as you thought it would be, which is exactly as it should be because that’s what it is.

Ah, so. Ah so.”

The day before yesterday, someone jumped off a building I was in, just a few minutes before I exited. It was a heartbreaking thing and I’m sorry to share such terrible news but I want to honor that life lived. I couldn’t get it out of my head: the time we shared in the building, alive, and then the instant everything shifted as they ran out of time.

What is the difference between that person and me, or you? Most fundamentally, it’s that we still have time.

When you have a baby, people love to tell you things like, “the nights are long but the years are short” and, “Enjoy it! It goes by so fast.” It’s well-meaning but too on the nose so it’s annoying. Because you already intuitively know all this in your bones. That some moments feel agonizingly stretched out and yet others you ache for before they’ve even passed.

On social media, I see people post, “time is a thief” along with a picture of their little one from a few years back.

The phrase has always stuck in my craw and I cannot make peace with it.

Time is a thief.

Like time as nefarious; impish criminal; brazenly greedy; a born reaper. I cannot make peace with it. Time uncovers loss, widening the aperture for us to view the erosion of what we once had or knew, but time is not a thief.

Time is Santa Claus. This year has been the greatest gift I’ve ever received.

Time is the biggest, bounciest trampoline in the universe.

Time is greatest gift we’ve ever received.

Time is the Genie in the lamp granting a wish for more wishes.

Time is God.

Time is just a season, but which is always now.

Time is everything.

Time is the only thing we have.

I spent much of my life feeling like I’d lost time or was too late — on so many things. But it’s funny — whenever the thing you’re seeking does arrive (in whatever way it does) it’s always on time and could never have been another way.

And you’re like damn, so it is. Thank you.

To celebrate the passage of a single year, which has both flown and crawled, here is some of what time has given me:

Puzzlingly, both more solitude and less time to myself than I’ve ever had.

A creative flow.

A long-legged little boy with soft and spiky white blonde hair, like a cool European footballer. Who smiles and laughs easily, especially at his parents jokes, preferring slapstick comedy most.

Clarity on some friendships, past or present, from a new vantage point. A couple of friends who’ve fallen away due to (or maybe accidentally timed to) my matrescence, which honestly I understand.

New waves of grief. Thank you, Time (*grimaces*).

A badass scar which makes itself known around important dates and anniversaries.

New dear friends. Time has shaped new loved ones from the substrate, giving me people that a year ago I did not know existed and who are now beloveds integral to my days.

Experiential intimacy with others in matrescence, which is almost beyond words.

The gift of seeing my husband as a father.

A sense of humor and self-acceptance that I haven’t finished a single book all year.

Emergent knowledge of what my son finds hilarious— an elusive, ever-changing target with which we are obsessed.

A defiant crop of grey hairs to replace so much of the hair that I have lost, and with which I’ve come to a truce (stopped trying to pluck).

Space to heal, both passively and actively on many levels (physical, emotional, mental, creative, etc.)

An opportunity to fall deeply in love with my body, for maybe the first time ever, as it has healed loyally. Amazement for the body’s elasticity, although overall collagen may be falling. Its ability to expand and contract in different places, with different fluids.

Approximately 10,000 ounces of breastmilk (ChatGPT estimated this).

Creative machinations: paintings, writings put into the world which touched others, missed some, or that that sparked conversations.

A growing body of horticultural wisdom.

A deeper appreciation for how tenacious plantar’s warts can be.

What has time given you in the past year?