It’s a strange thing I do. I did it when my mother-in-law was dying and when my friend was growing her hair back after chemo and when I had an extra tough group of students. I’ve done it for years, each time I face a hard task, especially one with uncertain duration. And I can’t figure out exactly why I do this.
Maybe it’s because I need some sort of anchor to measure progress when the finish line is uncertain, to deal with what’s nebulous by having some evidence that I can reach out and touch. During difficult times, the minutes and hours and days and weeks stretch so thin it seems they will break. But this strange thing I do relaxes the tension, grounding painful times into physical reality. It gives my brain something concrete to outlast.
By the time this bottle of conditioner is gone, I tell myself, my mother-in-law will be released from her pain. By the time this field of corn is harvested, my friend’s hair will have grown back to two inches. By the time we’ve used up the last of this oatmeal, the school year will have ended. It’s like I’ve turned daily routines into countdown clocks that keep me going.
And I keep asking—which will end first, the hard thing or the countdown timer?
Some of my grandchildren run cross-country. When they can’t see the finish line for the woods and hills and loops, they try the benchmark trick—making it to the next tree or around the next bend or past the next runner.
At seventy-one my benchmarks are bottles of conditioner and harvested cornfields and bags of oatmeal. They show me that time passes and, with it, many challenges. Mostly, I don’t share the strange things I do. But I’m getting older, which gives me leeway to do what’s unusual. Besides, I’ve seen some pain lately.
And if this way of counting down helps …
