(CREATIVE NONFICTION)
THE NONESSENTIALS' GUIDE TO MEASURING TIME
LAURA BERNSTEIN-MACHLAY
THE NONESSENTIALS' GUIDE TO MEASURING TIME
LAURA BERNSTEIN-MACHLAY
—Note: for everyone deemed essential in this breaking world, I wish you strength and health and hope. To anyone battling COVID-19, may you recover soon.
In these coronavirus days, lots of us— lawyers and etiquette coaches, accountants and hedge fund managers—are considered unnecessary. We’re rightfully advised to stay home where we pace furrows into our floorboards or relentlessly survey our remaining stores of toilet paper. Where we annoy the pets with our frantic devotion (the cats, anyway. It’s impossible to over-love any but the smallest, most curmudgeonly dogs).
To maintain equilibrium during social distancing, the crafty folks sew facemasks in all colors and patterns under the sun. They churn out quilt after quilt, knit wineglass cozies and create beaded earrings shaped like TP rolls. As for everyone else, we binge Netflix like champs and post endless videos of our perturbed cats. The gardeners garden; the poets drink; the fretters fret; the exercisers squat and crunch till their quads can cut glass and their abs bulge like ping pong balls.
As reported by numerous nonessentials, another result of prolonged isolation is time confusion (time being a human invention for divvying days into convenient lawyering or hedge funding segments). Due to said confusion, the customary minutes and hours have gone elastic, morphing into rubber bands stretching far beyond their original constraints, then contracting with a sudden snap—as when you watch Netflix to relax after a light lunch of wine and jellybeans, only to discover the sun has set, then risen again, and you could really use a shower.
Remedies exist, but alarms are intrusive, and clocks offer only the coldest of comfort. Therefore, I propose the following schemes for marking time.
Check them out, then create your own.
1. The daughter method:
Since the universities closed and your girl returned home, she’s gone feral, camping out in her bedroom among the detritus of exploded suitcases and days’ worth of dirty dishes, so you shut her door and back slowly away. She’s also reverted to primal teenage sleeping habits, which serves your timekeeping efforts.
If she’s absent from downstairs’ life, this means it’s before 2 P.M. If she’s monosyllabic and moans when asked to lode the dishwasher, it’s sometime prior to dusk. If she’s happily gabbing on her phone, it’s late night or early, early morning.
2. The cat method:
Convenient for anyone who’s succumbed to lethargy and can’t bother to raise shades or open blinds. Also useful for early spring days in Detroit which rarely brighten past gunmetal grey.
Study the cats—are they barnacles affixed to chair or lap? Are they absently kneading your gone-to-sleep legs? It’s daytime.
Are they rampaging room to room, clawing at walls, chewing on your exposed toes? Are they yowling like foghorns while dragging fuzzy socks up and down (and up and down) the stairs so you shout, Stop! For the love of God, just shut up already!? Then it’s most certainly night.
Disclaimer: Cats are notoriously unreliable. Utilize this method with caution.
3. The neighbor method:
Involves leaving the house, so prepare to hide from wild turkeys and coyotes repopulating your neighborhood. Not that you’ll go far, to the yard at most, to clean turkey droppings and circulars (which will continue arriving through flood and fire, pandemic and apocalypse).
Once outside, wait for neighbor-Domenico to open his door and survey his lawn like he does most afternoons. He’ll wave at you and call out, “Hey young woman,” because after 18 years, he still doesn’t know your name.
This is how you know at least a day has gone by.
4. The drunk method:
Count empty wine bottles. When the number reaches double digits, assume a week (more or less) has passed since you last donned mask and gloves and ski cap and ventured to the liquor store (deemed an essential business in Detroit).
Note: this method works in theory, but as isolating continues and wine consumption increases, counting may eventually grow impractical.
5. The eyebrow method:
Per your usual habit, dye your pale brows dark blond—then dye them nearly black when, due to time confusion, you leave on color far, far too long.
Check your mirror regularly: when your face loses its terrifying caterpillars, you’ll know weeks have elapsed.
6. The seasonal method (as correlates to Detroit weather)
If you’re starting to sweat, turn down the heat. If you don’t freeze, you can trust that spring has finally, finally arrived in more than just name.
7. The flowering houseplant method:
Consider the plumeria tree (aka frangipani) wrenched from its tropical hotspot to perch in your sunroom. Your husband nursed it through the cold season, when its leaves dropped one by one, landing each with a soft shush on the rug. He fertilized in spring and sighed when the leaves reemerged; he sprayed for mites that one time.
When your plumeria sends out buds, it’s probably early summer. When they open to perfect pinwheels that smell of sugar and blue sky, you’ll know months have gone by—because all versions of time, no matter their circus contortions, must pass eventually.
In this way you’ll know it’s safe--at last—to hope.
In these coronavirus days, lots of us— lawyers and etiquette coaches, accountants and hedge fund managers—are considered unnecessary. We’re rightfully advised to stay home where we pace furrows into our floorboards or relentlessly survey our remaining stores of toilet paper. Where we annoy the pets with our frantic devotion (the cats, anyway. It’s impossible to over-love any but the smallest, most curmudgeonly dogs).
To maintain equilibrium during social distancing, the crafty folks sew facemasks in all colors and patterns under the sun. They churn out quilt after quilt, knit wineglass cozies and create beaded earrings shaped like TP rolls. As for everyone else, we binge Netflix like champs and post endless videos of our perturbed cats. The gardeners garden; the poets drink; the fretters fret; the exercisers squat and crunch till their quads can cut glass and their abs bulge like ping pong balls.
As reported by numerous nonessentials, another result of prolonged isolation is time confusion (time being a human invention for divvying days into convenient lawyering or hedge funding segments). Due to said confusion, the customary minutes and hours have gone elastic, morphing into rubber bands stretching far beyond their original constraints, then contracting with a sudden snap—as when you watch Netflix to relax after a light lunch of wine and jellybeans, only to discover the sun has set, then risen again, and you could really use a shower.
Remedies exist, but alarms are intrusive, and clocks offer only the coldest of comfort. Therefore, I propose the following schemes for marking time.
Check them out, then create your own.
1. The daughter method:
Since the universities closed and your girl returned home, she’s gone feral, camping out in her bedroom among the detritus of exploded suitcases and days’ worth of dirty dishes, so you shut her door and back slowly away. She’s also reverted to primal teenage sleeping habits, which serves your timekeeping efforts.
If she’s absent from downstairs’ life, this means it’s before 2 P.M. If she’s monosyllabic and moans when asked to lode the dishwasher, it’s sometime prior to dusk. If she’s happily gabbing on her phone, it’s late night or early, early morning.
2. The cat method:
Convenient for anyone who’s succumbed to lethargy and can’t bother to raise shades or open blinds. Also useful for early spring days in Detroit which rarely brighten past gunmetal grey.
Study the cats—are they barnacles affixed to chair or lap? Are they absently kneading your gone-to-sleep legs? It’s daytime.
Are they rampaging room to room, clawing at walls, chewing on your exposed toes? Are they yowling like foghorns while dragging fuzzy socks up and down (and up and down) the stairs so you shout, Stop! For the love of God, just shut up already!? Then it’s most certainly night.
Disclaimer: Cats are notoriously unreliable. Utilize this method with caution.
3. The neighbor method:
Involves leaving the house, so prepare to hide from wild turkeys and coyotes repopulating your neighborhood. Not that you’ll go far, to the yard at most, to clean turkey droppings and circulars (which will continue arriving through flood and fire, pandemic and apocalypse).
Once outside, wait for neighbor-Domenico to open his door and survey his lawn like he does most afternoons. He’ll wave at you and call out, “Hey young woman,” because after 18 years, he still doesn’t know your name.
This is how you know at least a day has gone by.
4. The drunk method:
Count empty wine bottles. When the number reaches double digits, assume a week (more or less) has passed since you last donned mask and gloves and ski cap and ventured to the liquor store (deemed an essential business in Detroit).
Note: this method works in theory, but as isolating continues and wine consumption increases, counting may eventually grow impractical.
5. The eyebrow method:
Per your usual habit, dye your pale brows dark blond—then dye them nearly black when, due to time confusion, you leave on color far, far too long.
Check your mirror regularly: when your face loses its terrifying caterpillars, you’ll know weeks have elapsed.
6. The seasonal method (as correlates to Detroit weather)
If you’re starting to sweat, turn down the heat. If you don’t freeze, you can trust that spring has finally, finally arrived in more than just name.
7. The flowering houseplant method:
Consider the plumeria tree (aka frangipani) wrenched from its tropical hotspot to perch in your sunroom. Your husband nursed it through the cold season, when its leaves dropped one by one, landing each with a soft shush on the rug. He fertilized in spring and sighed when the leaves reemerged; he sprayed for mites that one time.
When your plumeria sends out buds, it’s probably early summer. When they open to perfect pinwheels that smell of sugar and blue sky, you’ll know months have gone by—because all versions of time, no matter their circus contortions, must pass eventually.
In this way you’ll know it’s safe--at last—to hope.
Laura Bernstein-Machlay's writing has been widely published in The Coachella Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Into the Void, Michigan Quarterly Review, Redivider, and others. She currently has essays appearing in The American Scholar (Theamericanscholar.org) and World Literature Today. Her work is forthcoming in The Evening Street Review. Travelers, Bernstein-Machlay's full-length collection of creative-nonfiction essays, was named a finalist in Foreword Review's INDIE book award contest. She has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in both the essay and poetry categories.