The Influence of Time

 I’ve been thinking about the passage of time. 

Two years ago in July, I was visiting my grandma in Idaho for what would be the last time. I didn’t know for certain that it would be, in fact, at the end of that trip, I made a vow that I would see her every summer with my mom. She passed on Easter last year, but that trip has been fresh in my mind lately and not just because of the frequent Facebook memories flashing all of the photos I took.

Grandma with her surviving sisters at the time of my visit.

My grandma and her sisters were all in their 90s during that visit. I was still living in Chicago and was dealing with an injury that put me out of running for the longest time in my life. My mom was also visiting and when my grandma was napping, she and I would look through old photos and letters. My dad’s birthday was later that month and I was preparing a gift for him. A book called “Letters to my Dad” with twelve pages, some with prompts, some without, where one would write letters that can be opened at specified dates and times in the future. 

So while I wrote to my dad, I was talking to my grandma and learning about my mom. I got to see letters and pictures from a time in her life before she was married and way before I existed. During a time in my life when I was hanging around with mostly younger friends, I was told often, “well, you’re young, you’ll be fine,” when I discussed my injury around these ladies in their 90s. I talked with my mom about things that she had been through with my grandma. We talked about when grandma was young and my mom was even younger. It was a healthy dose of perspective.

In particular, I remember one afternoon when my mom, my grandma and I were visited by my mom’s cousin, Rita Jo and my grandma’s two sisters, Aunt Gee Gee and Aunt Rita. They had asked me about Chicago and what I was up to. I told them that Dean and I were considering moving away. They asked where we would go and I told them “Nashville.” They lit up, laughed and said, “Ooooo, Nashville! Wouldn’t that be fun!” I remember thinking that it sounded as if they were talking about a vacation and not a major life upheaval. It struck me at that moment that I was sitting with women more than twice my age and to them I had more than half my life yet to live. Picking up and moving across the country was a fun adventure.

Momma and me. Looks like Mardi Gras a lifetime ago.

My dad is turning 75 years old next week. I’ve been working on his gift, so this has been on my mind also. I visited my parents recently for the Fourth of July holiday and they showed me two shoeboxes of loose photographs that they had unearthed recently. There were pictures of my parents when they were my age and younger than me, with pictures of me and my sister. As we went through those photos, they told stories. Some of things I remembered, some that I remembered from a different perspective and some that I had no recollection of (or didn’t exist during). Stories of fun times and stories of hard times. There were a lot of times. 

If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you’ll be aware that I lost my sixteen year old cat, Jake in May. It was difficult for me. I had not shared my living space with any living being (aside from my parents) longer than I had with Jake. I will always miss him and I still shed tears over him occasionally. After he died, my mom went through her computer with me and found all of the pictures and videos that she had taken of Jake over the years and burned them onto a disk. It was fun, and illuminating, to see the younger Jake - and the younger Meredith - and think about where we were when some of those pictures were taken over a decade ago and the things that we went through.

The way I’ve spliced these, it looks like Jake is seeing into the future and is very surprised.

Dean and I adopted Aang and Cloud two weeks ago. They are now eleven weeks old, incredibly bouncy and full of life and joy. They do not replace Jake, but they fill our house and our hearts in a way that we really needed during this time. We’ve started learning more about their individual personalities and idiosyncrasies. In two more weeks they’ll be the same age that Jake was when I got him. I have a difficult time remembering when Jake was this small. I look at Aang and Cloud and try and picture them as grown kitties, which also seems impossible. But it will happen. And I’m sure it will happen quickly. Right now I’m just enjoying this time with them being small, joyful and unwittingly destructive. 

Two days ago, I was cutting the grass and listening to a podcast where Conan O’Brien was talking to Tom Hanks about his movie Greyhound, which is a World War II story. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but one thing that Hanks discussed was how terrible the war was going for many years. That they didn’t know when it would end. There was a slogan “get it done in ‘51” because they actually thought it might take ten years. It didn’t, obviously, but I personally had no idea that there was that mentality at the time.

All this to say, that this year has seemed endless and filled with heavy and difficult things. The entire world has changed, and although we will eventually return to some semblance of normalcy, some things will probably never be the same. (Remember twenty years ago before 9/11 when you used to be able to meet people at their airplane gate?) Eventually, if we survive, we’ll make it to the other side and this time will be a memory. One that hopefully we all get through together, and that I personally hope pushes me to become more adaptable, create something new, learn new things, stretch my mind and gather my friends close (in a socially distanced way). 

I really hope someday to be an active lady in her fifties, with two grown cats, and a happy Dean, telling her nieces and nephews about that crazy time when the world was upside down. And it’ll all be just a crazy memory of hard times gone through.