What I mean to convey in my opening statement is that the school holidays - those blissfully gluestick-free weeks in between each term - upend my conceptions of time. Time is usually something I'm terrified of mismanaging or losing; I'm prone to treating it like a child I've assumed responsibility for. In the first week of the holidays, as my alarm is switched off and incoming emails dwindle to mailers from publishing companies, I relinquish my grip on my time-child, eventually getting to the point where I lose her entirely.
Still, something has to occupy my days. Saturday morning brought with it a take-all-the-breath-out-of-you conversation. 'I'd like to hear from you less,' the other party concludes. Replaying it later that day makes me throw up in my mouth. There is no squirrelling out of the situation; hours of internal processing have been lost trying to make sense of shifting dynamics, culpability and lost love. Further hours lie ahead, I know, but in lieu of lying in the fetal position 24/7 and losing all grip on reality, I've opted to pivot, hard, towards one of my favourite retreats: reading.
A stack of books more than a foot tall sits to my left, waiting to be written up before being re-shelved and returned to personal and public libraries. I have lost huge chunks of time to Jewel's fantastic memoir, more afternoons still to Bridget Jones and her crew in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. After finding the exact book that I was up to in the series in an op-shop on Thursday (could there be any surer pointer to one's next reading choice?), I returned to Three Pines and a down-but-not-out Inspector Gamache as he investigates yet another murder in the otherwise idyllic Quebecois town. This morning, after putting on a load of washing, I sat at the kitchen counter with the final pages of Hilary Mantel's Giving Up the Ghost, aching and in awe at her commitment to bearing witness to her life.
What has occupied my time less, for reasons both grasped and hazy, is writing. Keeping my writing appointment this morning has required that I ignore the whorls of hair swirled across the light-grey tiles of my bedroom and hang out the washing after rather than before church. Domestic rites have held more than their usual allure for me recently; I crave the sense of creating order from chaos, at a much faster clip than what is usually required to order my slovenly thoughts. Mantel is responsible for bringing me back to my desk and re-girding myself for the task. "I am writing in order to take charge of [my] story," she says. It's time for me to return to the same.
Mercifully, I have not been left entirely to my own mind or book stack this week. My youngest brother, Jeremiah, has been up from Christchurch, a gift for which we can thank the education scheduling powers-that-be. I have dragged him out for urban walks; he has introduced me to a life-changing device that allows me to play music through my car speakers. The older sister/younger brother dynamic lives on. My friend, C, invited me round for a delicious dinner and hang on Thursday. I sat cross-legged on her couch and nibbled happily at white chocolate & raspberry slice as we discussed the latest season of Taskmaster and the ads we are now subjected to as Women of a Certain Age.
The upcoming week will bring with it a return to reality, or something like it. My mind is filled with to-do-lists, starting with what I'm hoping to achieve in my classroom on Tuesday. Stapling art to the walls and de-cluttering overburdened shelves is no miracle cure, but it'll go a long way in easing this overburdened teacher's mind.
Time is reaching out for me in the dark; I reach back.
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