then and when

Sweet Elizabeth's comment on my last post included the following quote by Cynthia Rylant in her book called All in a Day:

"The past is sailing off to sea, the future's fast asleep./ A day is all you have to be, it's all you get to keep."

And it struck home with me and many other commenters. (THANK YOU ELIZABETH)

It is so hard to feel that now is all we know we have since that feels so scary, so limited and puts so much pressure on the importance of the moment. Zen bends us toward living in the moment, living in the now, the present, but I suck at turning off the spigot of whatifs that lead to futures that may or may not happen, and I suck extra at turning off the spigot of regret, memory, historical obsessiveness...

Time is a funny thing-- taken alone, I like sweeping second hands that remind me that this is all one continuous stream, and it lets me know how arbitrary our increments are for marking it- a second, a minute, an hour--- days start to make more sense, as do moon phases, as do seasons-- those have physical bases-- things that we can observe and experience more or less directly (assuming we trust our senses)--

Time during trying to conceive is crazybatshit as we all know-- waiting and rushing and waiting and panicking and rushing and waiting.... two week waits, marking time by ultrasound appointments, blood draws, inseminations of various kinds, test dates, all with the metronome of morning and evening stim shots...

We feel the panic of aging, the sheer and utter panic as if our ovaries will seize up the moment we turn ___ and we'll be done with a silent Ding. We feel the utter visceral panic of running out of time.

We spend time hoping for a future we can see so clearly- our kids at the beach or on a bike or in our arms...

We spend time fearing a future we can see too clearly too- one in which our dreams have not been realized or that things don't go as hoped, that something goes wrong, now, soon, or eventually. And we fear losses we know and those we cannot imagine. We fear loss of opportunity.

We regret not starting sooner, not realizing what we had or what we could lose, we wish we had made different choices...

I am all about "then" and "when"-- back then..... or when I....

and trying to stay right here, in this moment, is brutally hard. Sometimes because it sucks rocks, but sometimes just because it is just so hard to stop bungy-ing around, pingponging, crazy superballing (sounds better than it is, I promise)--

I think that is why this simple little challenge has been and continues to be so meaningful to me-- it is not changing my situation but it is changing my instantaneous experience of time.

My cat is lying next to me on the sofa cushion. For the past 10 seconds I watched the stripes on his sides expand and contract as he breathes, the black if his stripes is so dark it is not-light. And the hairs that sit to each side are those magical cat hairs that start silvery brown, and are tipped in white.

Why does this matter? Because for those 10 seconds, time stretched. My life slowed down a little.

And for those 10 seconds I was just simply kate, looking at the stripes on my cat rise and fall. Not old kate or failing kate or worried kate or maybepregnant-maybenot kate, or kate who might never be pregnant or....

just kate

and cat

and stripes.