Month: February 2024

A Leap in Time

This essay is a blast from the past, written way back when, when the kids were little, and I was juggling all aspects of a working mom’s life. Also, I was wearing a watch, not relying on my phone for time and date, so that tells you how old this piece is.  It does seem appropriate for February 29 on a leap year. 

Ten minutes off my morning schedule pushes the kids twenty off theirs.  Any blip in routine has an exponential effect on their morning.  If they don’t get going on time, I don’t get going on time, and we’re all late.  It’s leap year and the calendar says March 8, my watch says March 9, it’s been off for more than a week and I have no idea how to reset it.  It doesn’t really matter, since between work, kids, and gardens I can barely keep track of days anyway.  

I can tell the seasons by the sun and the weather, but the days of the week confuse me.  Christopher asks me each morning, “Is it a stay-home day?”  I have to think.  I rewind yesterday for hints of today.   Do I have a meeting?  Did I get up early enough to drive to wherever I’m supposed to be, by whenever I’m supposed to be there?  Do I have time for a coffee on the way to work?  Must I get to work on time, or will a few minutes late go unnoticed?  If my muscles hurt from too much yard work, it must be the weekend. Or Monday.

Christopher gives up on my thinking frown and goes to ask his older brother.  Mac knows the days, he knows the schedule, and he can do math in his head.  He could probably reset my watch if I could remember to ask him.  I remember my kids’ ages, but not my own, and I have to think twice about their birthdays.  Mac’s is so symmetrical, born at 4:27 pm on  April 27th.  Or was it 4:28 pm on April 28th?  Christopher’s is May 9, I think, or that’s our friend Amber’s, and his is on May 11.

After juggling five days of work, schools, and music lessons I live for the weekends when I can slow down.  I like to watch plants grow.  This week the cactus seeds started in their tiny terra cotta pots.  Last week Johnny-jump-ups.  I pretend to grow seeds for the kids’ education, but it’s really for the magic.  Who knows what kind of cactus will germinate, or which ones will die from my kind over-watering. The Farmer’s Almanac recommends following the rules of astrology and planting when the moon is in Cancer, Scorpio, or Pisces.  But I simply use the paper calendar sitting by our table-top nursery with its calm rhythm of days printed on a grid.  It’s almost too late to start the peppers; less than six weeks until the last average frost date.  The earth, the sun, and the moon still tell the plants to grow, the tides to move, the days to shorten, or to lengthen.  They give seasons of fasts and seasons of harvests.  There is the day to plant the squash when the nights remain above 40 degrees, the day to rest on a lawn chair when the afternoon first reaches 70, and the day to cover the tomatoes when the first frost threatens in fall. 

Why do we have a leap day to add confusion to my barely coping routine?  Leap day of leap year, the extra day added to make our calendar match the Earth’s orbit.  The Romans had the Julian calendar; Julius Ceasar borrowed it from the Egyptians.  But it wasn’t quite right; they had to keep adding leap days.  In 1582, Pope Gregory the XIII put his best people on a review of the calendar, and implemented a more complicated leap day system, skipping the leap days on most of the beginning century years.  But to get the holidays back on schedule, they had to adjust by about 10 days.  Catholics at the time fell asleep on October 4, and woke up on October 15.  Eleven days in a single night on the word of a pope.  A loss of eleven days in the harvest month to gain the Gregorian calendar. What’s in a day, be it Sunday, or a week from Wednesday?  Today if the church or the government took away our days we would protest, not for the artificial shortening of our lifespan, but for the permanent loss of one weekend.  Two less days of rest and kids and gardens. 

Then there is the day to go on daylight savings time.  Another confusion of timing.  One more disruption to my diurnal clock. One more challenge to getting the kids up and out on time.  And my darn watch again.  Each spring, I plant seeds to grow into violets and then forget to water them.  Time and my memory can be the driest peat.  If I studied the theory of relativity, I’m sure I could really have time figured out.  Or I could let someone else do it, who has more time and inclination, someone who can do math in his head, and then write a book that simplifies the theory to plain English. Then I’ll read the book, in my spare time. Right after I read the owner’s manual for my watch. 

One day I gained a quarter of an hour.  That morning, I left my house at 7:45 for my half-hour drive to work and arrived at 8:00 am.  Where did those 15 minutes slip in from?  Where is that time warp on Interstate 90, and how can I hit it again?  If I could just find those extra minutes each day, I promise I wouldn’t waste them.  I’d spend them usefully and efficiently; I’d put in a load of laundry or tidy up the kitchen… or more likely I’d just have another cup of coffee, read the paper, and still leave late for work. Whatever the time of the morning, the name of the calendar, or the day of the week, I’m always waiting for the next thing, the next season, the next birthday, always reading ahead.  Some days I need to remember to stop looking at my watch, finish my coffee, hug my kids, and go outside and pull the weeds.

[Photo credit pexels.com]

What’s the Buzz about the Third Person?

First there is “third person” as a point of view, where the writer is the narrator and tells a story using the names of people, and the pronouns he, she, or they, in the text.  “First person” is from my point of view.  I am my favorite narrator.  There is also “second person”, where the author is writing about you, the reader.  I find this a confusing way to write, and I’m sure you’ll forgive me for not going into detail on that point of view at this time. 

Second, there is “third hand” where information is passed on through several sources before reaching you.  Third hand information can be unreliable or exaggerated, like the game of gossip. While looking up a few definitions for this blog, I also found another kind of third hand, a robot-like stand with clips to hold things still while working on them.  I kind of want one, I figure I can always use another hand around here.   

Finally, there is the “rule of the third person”.  I learned this rule from my husband, a wildland firefighter, that worked in the forest a lot.   The fire crew typically walks single file on their way to a work site, or an active fire.  The third person rule is relevant to bees and hornets. The rule goes like this: The first person walking close by a ground nest or hive wakes the bees up.  The second person walking by a ground nest makes the bees mad.  The third person gets stung. A lot.  Anyone after the third person runs like hell away from the angry bees hopefully avoiding being stung. 

I think of this rule regularly during hikes or rides in the summer, since I tend to prefer being at the end of the line in a small group of people or horses.  There comes a point in summer, we’ll call this bee season, where we minimize off-trail riding just in case there is a bee’s nest under the logs our horses are stepping over.  Or, if we still are determined to go cross country in late summer, I will guide my horse in a different and parallel path from the others, so that each of us is only at the first stage of waking the bees up, hopefully avoiding the third stage of angry bees.  I also watch the ground a lot, looking at flowers, mushrooms, and watching for dark buzzing insects crawling out of holes.   

I’ve yet to be on a horse stung by a bee, or bees, while riding, but I’ve seen it happen, once with some not-very aggressive bees.  My friend’s horse reacted to stings by hopping around, but the rider rode it well, and lived to tell the tale.  I have however, heard (third hand) stories of yellow-jackets or hornets attacking several horses at once, with resultant bucking, bolting, and dumping of riders.  I’m crossing my fingers that this doesn’t happen to me, or if it does, that my stoic draft pony will not react too badly. 

In the meantime, maybe I need to change-up my perspectives a bit and try to be the first person on the trail and let someone else bring up the rear for a change.  The second person might be you, followed by the third victim, I mean person.  Hopefully the third person will be alert to the buzz and choose her own path with her unique point of view. 

[photo credit: pexels.com]

Note: I actually appreciate all of the bees, wasps, and hornets, though many I prefer to keep at a distance.  They all have their place and their jobs in nature.  Of course, my favorite bees are the fuzzy native bumble bees, that will sting if they have to, but are usually not aggressive.  They are necessary for pollination of so many plants.  Learn more about bumble bees here: https://www.xerces.org/publications/identification-and-monitoring-guides/bumble-bees-of-western-united-states