My favorite thing was the green chair. We had a rotation, a way to make sure that each of us got to go up with each other, all eight of us switching off constantly. I did not understand the closeness, didn't understand the feelings, only understood that it felt good to be loved. When Sally would make us hike up the practice hill, run after run, we'd laugh. Our gloves were soaked, our cheeks tanned, our boots unbuckled. And then after three o'clock, when our parents would sit and drink beer, and we'd slide down the hill on tiny lunch trays, praying the groomer wasn't nearby.
It wasn't real, the snowshoe trails and jumping over waterfalls, the french flies and sleepovers, the mogul runs and hiking out back onto the road. It wasn't real, and we lived in a vortex where nothing existed but the eight around us, where nothing but the snow and the skis and the eight were important. It wasn't real-- it was never-never time.
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When I was younger, I used to see how long I could hold myself still for. I would still my toes, my ankles and calves and knees and thighs, my torso and fingers and arms and shoulders, my chin and cheekbones and nose and eyes, one by one, until I was stone. I would sit, and sit, until I had an itch or had to move for some other reason, and then I'd start all over again. My theory was this- the longer I stood still, the less time I was taking up. Movement equaled time to me, so I thought that by not making any, I wouldn't take up any time. I wanted to save these moments, seconds, hours, weeks, months up and use them for when I was old. I always thought it was hours that I held still for, yet by the end of my ritual, only a few minutes had passed.
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When we'd just moved into our house, we played hide and seek a lot. Unused to all the space we now had, we would hide in the same few places until we realized that we had an entire house to use. I climbed up to the top of my parent's closet, cocooned myself in a sheet, and waited. I felt utterly alone, wrapped in silk that felt eerily like an entire world. I waited, and waited, and waited for what felt like forever. And then suddenly it felt harder to breathe, like the sheet was getting smaller and smaller, and there was less and less air, and my whole body was shrinking along with the sheet. I felt like the only person in the world, and the world had become inside this sheet. My house no longer existed, my siblings and parents and pets, nothing was real, but me and the white sheet. I screamed. And I threw the sheet off, and climbed down the levels, shaking, landing with a thud. I ran downstairs, running my hands along the walls, making sure they were still there.
My brother hadn't even finished counting to thirty. And it seemed like years had gone by; never-never time.
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We cannot go back. Only linear, we are bound by the confines of time, no matter how much we wish we weren't. It exists to trap us within normal limits. We will be born, we will live, and we will all die. In between, we muddle, we differentiate, we exist, but in the end, it will all end.
Linear- we cannot go back. And it takes one second, one nanosecond, to change, irrevocably and indelibly, but that nanosecond will end and we cannot go back. It is hard to choose, because those choices determine where we will go and as long as you don't choose, anything is possible. Time brings us back because as those seconds, those nanoseconds tick away, we are reminded that this will all come to a close-- we are hurtling at light speed towards a conclusion we already know.
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"We ran to the cupboards and pulled out the biggest pot and heaviest ladles and clanged them as loud as we could, dancing around our mother's body, shouting, 'Happy Birthday!... Happy New Year!...It's zero o'clock!... It's never-never time!... It's the time of your life!' "
