Thoughts about time

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about time.  Not time as in, gotta hurry or I’ll be late. Or no way is Kennedy almost four. Or how in the world can I get all of this done by Friday?

More like, how time is an investment. One that rarely yields immediate returns.

For example, when I began going to Al-Anon, I was a noisy mess of anxiety and control. I lived for the fixing high, and when I couldn’t get it, I tried again, but with more persistence. And more and more and more obnoxiously loud persistence until I could barely stand myself.

After a bunch of friends suggested I try Al-Anon, I showed up to the Friday night meeting at the Rolling Hills Moravian Church. I sat on a little toddler chair in the pre-school room in a circle with people who drove me freakin’ nuts.

First of all, they were absurdly calm. No one was worried about the very real threats our loved ones posed to themselves. Second, they had pithy little sayings, like “Live and let live” and “One day at a time.” These were ridiculous and no help at all. And third, they wouldn’t let me talk about anyone but myself.

That was the last straw. My husband was trying to kill himself with vodka, and these people wouldn’t help me help him stop drinking. They kept telling me to detach with love. What the heck? I quit.

That didn’t work. Eventually, I frenzied myself into such a state of fear and rage that I worried for my safety.

So I went back. I listened. And slowly, glacially slowly, their little sayings began to work. And after years and years and years, I got well.

Mostly.

And all of this took enormous amounts of time.

Now I work with teenagers and their teachers and counselors and advisors. I have a funky little job I can’t seem to describe in less than five full minutes, so I’ve stopped trying. When someone asks me what I do, I say, “I work with teenagers.” If they persist, I prattle a bit about busses and paperwork, and that generally does the trick.

Of the 116 kiddos in my charge, around ten of them play a little too close to the tracks. There’s Joya. Joya annoys the living daylights out of her teachers because she sleeps in class, and when they suggest she wake up, she gets angry. “My work is done. Why are you bothering me? This is so annoying.”

Right.

So Joya spends a lot of time in my office.

When we first began meeting, she was suspicious of me. She mumbled answers to my questions and mostly looked down at her hands. Eventually, I discovered that her mother works nights, so she doesn’t sleep well. She pulls a lot of late hours at the Wendy’s drive-thru, so she can give her mom money to help pay bills.

She’s tired. So she sleeps in class now and again.

I shared this with her teachers who were kind of unimpressed. I mean, “Oh, gosh, good to know. Thanks for talking with her. Problem solved.”

No, not problem solved. Her mother still works nights, and she still spends lots of hours at the Wendy’s drive thru. She is still tired. She still sleeps in class.

Joya and I have some great conversations. She can be quite funny and bubbly. And when I suggest ideas for studying or rest or eating, she often seems surprised. She also works me a little bit. After all, it’s more fun to hang out and have girl time in my office than to take notes about the structure of the human ear.

So I send her back to class. For a day or two, she perks up. And then we do it again.

I feel a little like Burgess Meredith playing Mickey in the first Rocky movie. Except I’m prettier, and I don’t cuss (well, occasionally one slips). I think of Mick pounding Rocky’s muscles and growling encouragement at him and sending him back into the ring.

Again and again and again.

This is what I do. And it’s never a quick fix.

It takes time.

And that can be maddening.

Here’s another case. I’ve got a chronic skipper I’ll call Sam. A couple of Thursdays ago, I spent over an hour with Sam. We had what I would characterize as a meaningful conversation. It started awkwardly, as they all do, and there were some tears in the middle, and by the end, we’d made progress. I felt certain.

And then Sam skipped class the next three days.

It felt like the biggest F-you.

I was mad. Well, mad-ish. Frustrated is a better word.

And then I had to laugh. I mean, really? Three straight days? The next time I saw Sam, he cheerily said, “Good morning, Mrs. Forbes!”

Time.

Time is an investment that rarely yields a quick return.

So now I have some new pithy sayings I often say. Well, they’re not new—just new to me. Baby steps, I’ll tell a teacher when a kid logs her fifteenth tardy in a row. “Remember when she didn’t come at all? Baby steps.”

Here’s another one: progress, not perfection. I think about Michelle, who hates wearing a uniform. I mean, detests it with a passion that, directed towards a useful goal, could spontaneously dig a well in Africa. If she gets the pants and top right, she wears the wrong shoes or puts on extra layers that are out of dress code.

But she’s here, I tell myself. This kid who tries to drop her program about every three weeks. She’s here. Progress, not perfection.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at a sister campus. I wanted to watch a colleague—who also happens to be a lifelong friend—recruit students for next year. As we waited for her teen visitors’ bus to pull up, we talked about our former selves, the crazy women who couldn’t sleep for fear, who sincerely believed God had anointed us his special envoys to save all the broken people, except of course, ourselves.

We laughed about the sayings that used to drive us crazy. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Live and let live. Blah blah blah.

We also conceded that Al-Anon saved our lives.

Last night, Matt and I went to church. We don’t generally hit Thursday night services because we are old and we go to bed not long after the sun. But we heard that one of our favorite-but-infrequent speakers was teaching, and she’s so good, so on point, so helpful, we didn’t think twice about jumping into the truck in the rain.

On the drive there, I was distracted by some peeves I like to pet, minor irritations that scrub at me from time to time. I chewed on them a bit, and then tamped them down like I do, unrepentant and unresolved.

In the lobby, I ran into sweet Kim, whom I hadn’t seen in a long time, and we had a quick catch-up. We sat with Hannah and Lauren and sang our favorites and ribbed each other with our inside jokes. After the service, Matt and I talked at length with our friend James about dates (the edible kind) and biking and tiny houses, and we made plans to get together Saturday.

Community. Rest. Singing.

Pet peeves. Irritations.

And to all of this, I say, Baby steps. Progress, not perfection.

So, time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about her. How little her pace matches my desire, how the things I love and live for will be gone in minutes, but that her healing takes decades.

And I think about time’s master, the one who wraps a towel around his waist and washes my dirty feet. I think about how he says, “This is my circus and you are my monkey and let’s just take our time.”