Sweet Time

Time, for most New Yorkers I know, is a source of anxiety. Many of our interactions follow a simple, looping script. “Shit, I’m going to be late…I am late…I’m sorry I’m late…I really wish I had more time…Oh dear, I have to leave soon…Damn, I should have left sooner…Shit, I’m going to be late…” For adults, time is a rigid and unyielding affair. Little black lines, tick marks of progress, shape our days into a relentless sameness that dulls the senses. But children measure time in increments of desire. I remember so clearly when I was young, how the two weeks before my birthday stretched into something that felt like seven years, while I waited to see what presents my parents had bought me. I remember how each week I dreaded the arrival of Sunday, unbearable Sunday with nothing to do, and how as it approached I would always marvel at its ability to last longer than any weekday ever could. And I remember being afraid to go to sleep at night and how those eight hours, alone in the dark, felt each and every morning, as if I’d survived an eternity.

But what got me thinking about time this week was a paper bag full of smarties and blow pops. I was trying to get rid of the proliferation of uneaten candy that threatened to take over our pantry. These leftovers, the remains of countless birthday party goody bags, were edging out space for real food. So we dumped the bags onto the kitchen floor and each child pick out a few pieces to keep. I intended to throw out the rest but looking at the pile I felt remorse. It was all so colorful. I thought, why not unwrap those smarties and make a collage with them? Then my son suggested we save the blow pops to make a sculpture. The kids got to work and I watched from the sink as my daughter carefully arranged the hard sugar dots onto a red piece of construction paper. First she laid down a line of blue sky with a multicolored sun in the top right corner of the page. Then came an A-frame house, landscaped with a single green bush, dotted by pink smarty flowers. My son created a sculpture of a little man, with a lollipop body and Starburst limbs. It took a long time to accomplish all this and they never once looked up from their task.

My kids can’t tell time. They’re six and as far as they’re concerned, the clock is just a green, plastic decoration that hangs among a variety of other equally bright items on our kitchen wall. Sometimes I feel bad I haven’t taught them to tell time, as if I’m shirking some sort of parental responsibility. But watching them work reminded me that to do things right takes a certain amount of freedom. They were oblivious to the fact that we had a playdate that afternoon, that I wanted them to clean up their worktable before we left, that we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. And therefore, they created beautiful things.

We are in such a rush to teach kids adult concepts. We mark their progress by noting when they have mastered skills that make them more like us. Telling time is a sign that they have the ability to understand the abstract constructs that our society depends upon. Counting money, I’m sure is next. But in agreeing to the system, something profoundly intuitive is lost, something we spend much of our adult life trying to reclaim. The right amount of time is the time it takes to finish the job, not the time we have left before the next thing we’ve committed to.


**Note, the photo in this post is courtesy of astrogirl529.
I found it by typing candy clock into flickr.com.
If you'd like to see more of her sharp, colorful photos, follow this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolehastings/