Time Talks Back

We sat at the kitchen table. Easter dinner was, for the most part, done. The ham was in the oven. The crabmeat dressing and everything else sat on the counter covered in foil. My mother and I were playing gin rummy, her favorite card game. She used to play with her co-workers at the shipyard where she worked the third shift for more years than I can remember. She taught us and everyone of her grandchildren how to play. My dad sat across from me, watching the game with his fading eyes. He never plays. He doesn’t like games. My older brother finished frying the hot water cornbread. He used coconut oil instead of lard. His attempt to get our parents to eat cleaner. Easier said than done.

He stood at the kitchen sink staring out the window into the back yard. Once full of pine and oak trees long felled by hurricanes, the backyard looked smaller now. When we were young, especially during the fall, it seemed like a never-ending expanse full of dead leaves and pine straws. Calloused hands raked for hours. I hate pine straws. The water from the faucet ran through my brother’s fingers. He stared. I tapped my mom and directed my eyes and with my lips pointed towards the sink. I wanted her to see. He was far away. She smiled. “AJ,” I said. “Come back. Where you at?” He chuckled as he continued to look out the window. “Just remembering some of the things we used to do back there.”

“Time is ruthless,” I said in response. My dad chimed in with a slight smile. “And it’ll talk back to you, too.” His words stop me in mid shuffle.

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It was a startling formulation about memory and haunting. I don’t know what my brother remembered or if he saw ghosts raking leaves or playing wiffle ball, the dog barking at the gate or a tense moment between father and sons. But those memories seemed a lifetime away. Time moved quickly and ruthlessly in its indifference. We got older. Left home. Experienced joys and, in my brother’s case, unimaginable loss. And now we were home, tending to mom and dad. Watching them watch us. Worrying about them as time weathered and withered.

But my dad’s words made it clear, at least to me, that time isn’t indifferent. It talks back to you. A song may trigger a memory about your first kiss. A sound may send you hurtling back to when you first learned how to ride a bike. Or a scent may remind you of your mom in the kitchen—young, vibrant, with a cigarette hanging from her gorgeous lips. Time will talk back to you. Give you a sense of the life lived. Regrets and triumphs. Loves and losses. Memories that are yours as you make your way to that last consequential breath.

Some things we try to forget — we need to forget — in order to live. But it isn’t by invitation that time speaks to us. That is the haunting, I guess. With the view from here, memories (however fragmented and, sometimes, untrustworthy) remind us of how we have scratched and clawed our way to now — of how, as Clara Ward sang, we got over. I wonder how time talks to my dad and mom, with their babies grown and living in other states and as they manage their doctor’s appointments, pill boxes, old and new pains, and responsibilities, still.

They have to do so in a moment where the country desires to turn back time. It is one of the ugly ironies of Trumpism. With all the uncertainty and chaos, with the callousness and cruelty, people still have to live their lives. They have to pay their bills, raise their children, take care of their loved ones, and bury their dead. Love the people who loved them who are now slowing down. Life goes on. Time keeps moving. No matter what these people do. And we have to tend and love in spite of it all.

I finally dealt the cards. My mom smiled. She was winning the game this time.

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