Time: Bottle it or spend it?

I did something so out of character for me, starting on May 1^st.

Still one of my favorite photos taken when two where still in our local school, one in college. ©2025 Nancy E Holroyd

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I started writing a poem each day. It was part of a Substacker’s challenge. A challenge to write a poem a day as part of a spiritual practice. The author of The Liminality Journal feels poetry is essential, especially in difficult times. She would offer up a daily prompt, a few related or inspiring photographs and an example of a poem based on that day’s prompt word.

Now, I am not a poet. I have never aspired to be a poet. And if there is a rule to break, I will surely break it. It was with great trepidation; I offered up my first stab at a poem on May 1^st. The prompt word was “still.”

Still

There is stillness in the air,
Nary a ripple on the water.
Magic of early dawn displayed,
in the awakening moment.
The rising sun paints the sky
in pinks, golds and yellow,
Reflections in the still water below.

The deep bass voice of a bullfrog
interrupts the stillness as day breaks.

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Surprise of all surprise, I got 13 likes and two comments! When the bullfrog showed up, I was like, ‘whaaat?’ I had no intention of allowing any creature interrupting the quiet of morning tide. I burst out laughing.

When the first commenter said the bullfrog’s voice gave her chills, I realized, sometimes the unexpected shows up at the right time, even if not planned.

And the first commenter let me know she was grateful I did not remove him. The second commenter was likewise enamored with the wisdom of bullfrogs. There you have it—the bullfrog would not be silenced—so he remained. And this was a good thing.

By day 16, I was still writing a poem a day. Some better and some worse than others. I still cannot claim to be a poet. However, others participating can easily make this claim. I have continued writing a poem a day.

Day 16’s prompt, which brings me to the true subject of this essay, was: Deep Time

Telling time was not one of Sheila’s skills. She had no real concept of time in the way we think of it. Whether an event occurred 10 years ago, or yesterday, it was all the same to her.

She could look at a digital clock and say, “it’s a 4 and 10,” or “a 7 zero 3.” But, again, it really didn’t tell her anything about the day.

Time is an abstract concept and people with Down syndrome are concrete thinkers, So, she was not able to take this abstract concept of past, present, future and make it mean something for her. For her there was only the here and now. Meditating on her here and now I started writing.

We spent a lot of time reviewing days of the week, months, years. No amount of energy was ever going to change her inherit sense of time, or lack thereof.

She listened and responded to her body’s sense of rhythm throughout the day. Her body informed her of what she would do and when she would do it.

During the pandemic she lost the rhythm of getting up, getting dressed, making and packing her lunch, having breakfast, brushing teeth and hair, washing face and hands, getting herself ready to leave the house. The rhythm of activities at Life Prep… gone in an instant.

But every day she would do her routine – except for the lunch part and getting ready to leave the house. Instead, she ordered her day by 20-to-30-minute blocks of time, not clock watched blocks of time, just her inherit body rhythm sense of time.

Every block of time she would shift which room of the house she was in and what activity she was doing. Neither Forrest nor I said anything to her, we just observed.

For all the years Forrest worked, about 10 minutes before he would arrive home. She would stop what she was doing and go to the window in our music room and watch for his car to arrive. Since he didn’t always come home the exact same time each day, how did she do it?

I used to say, “she tunes into the universe.”

Her sense of time was different than ours. She functioned from a totally different operating system, and that was okay.

Time spent with Sheila (and her sisters). Time not spent with our girls, has delivered an ear worm. One about days lasting forever and saving them up like treasures to be spent with the loved one.¹

When AJ first went off to college, I missed her day-to-day presence in our lives. Behind that missing, I knew we would see her again. Every time she came home and left again the ache of missing would reduce, not disappear, but lessen.

The same was true for CJ. Her first leave taking was the hardest, but it has lessened over time. It never disappears.

With all three of my children, I have believed that my job as a parent is temporary. They’re a gift to be enjoyed and released upon adulthood, or death.

All this thinking about time…

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Deep Time

In long buried time
in the depths of the past.
A time before, I knew you then.
In a time swirling far out beyond,
long after your passing,
I will see you, yet again.

There is a thread that connects
us to our past and carries us to our future.
I knew you then and now.

We are all connected through threads of time.
Weaving us in and out of our collective lives.

Ah… I say at your birth…
You are an old soul, come back to me in this time.

And I say at your birth…
Ah… you have been here, many times before,
and you are a living angel not for this world.

And I say at your birth…
Ah… you have not been here many cycles before…
Like your sisters before you,
your journey will take you to new places.

All of us…
swirling, curling around each other,
in and out of different times
and different places.

Deep time
Shallow time
New time
Future time
Weaving, dancing,
knit together,
torn apart…
Reconnect,
split apart…

Together always,
Always apart.

We shall see each other…
over and over again.

A human, not an AI text generator, wrote this essay.

1. Jim Croce—Time in a Bottle