Tales from Rural Maine: Understanding time

When my nephew was very little, he seemed to have an unreasonable level of frustration when he was told to wait for a very short time. He wasn't a naturally impatient person, but for some reason being told to wait "a minute" left him feeling hopeless, as though you had said an hour instead of a minute.

My a-ha moment came when I realized that for Bailey, "a minute" didn't mean sixty seconds. It literally meant, "some-long-interminable-indeterminate-amount-of-time-that-generally-means-a-grown-up-isn't-willing-to-say-no-but-also-isn't-willing-to-do-what-was-asked-of-them-right-now."

We were all saying, "In a minute, Bai!" when he asked to play or get help or get attention or have a treat or any and all of the other things kids are needing when they're three. He hadn't yet learned about measuring time on clocks; his understanding of words and of time came from his experience. "A minute" could be counted on to be a frustratingly long amount of time.

As I stood on Tuesday night in the kitchen staring at the heap of dirty dishes that Pete said on Monday morning that he'd wash "later," it occurred to me that what he meant was...he'd do them "in a minute."

Yoga Tales from Rural Maine: Holding up the sun

Last night, I showed Peter a picture of me and my friends spelling L-O-V-E with our bodies on the beach at sunset in Costa Rica. I had shared it on Facebook, but he doesn't social media much, so he hadn't seen it. 

He appreciated it. And then he said, "You know, I really love that one of the girl holding up the sun at the beach." 

(This photo is my profile picture.) I looked at him, realized he wasn't kidding, laughed and said, "Honey? That girl is me."