Mother time

The art that is helping me to reflect on my relationship with time

          Visiting Seacliff Beach where I got married, a place where time stops for me

I’ve been thinking about the concept of time a lot lately. It’s been circling me, like things in life that want our attention do. It started when I saw Oliver Burkeman speak at the Durham Book Festival in October. He was promoting his new book, but I ended up buying his previous book ‘Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals’. It examines the idea that, on average, a human life is just four thousand weeks. But instead of promoting productivity and trying to squeeze as much as possible out of those four thousand weeks, Burkeman invites us to embrace the limitations of our existence, he promotes the idea of settling and encourages us to share our time with others rather than hoard it to ourselves. He speaks to paring life back and accepting that we will never get it all done.

I haven’t written on here since I started back at work after maternity leave, which was nearly four months ago now! The summer passed in a haze of nursery bugs, a trip to urgent care and molar teething (if you know you know) and then autumn started to creep in, and now it feels like Christmas is around the corner. On a recent episode of Mark Manson’s podcast, I heard him and his fellow host talk about how, as you get older, time feels like it’s speeding up because your days become more repetitive so it’s harder to distinguish them from each other. Add into that the domesticity and routine attached to parenthood, and life can get a bit groundhoggy. And yet, lately, each time I have a thought like this that feels limiting, I gently try to remind myself how sacred the everyday aspects of my life are too. How my future self will one day want to return to these seemingly mundane moments, how average days are a privilege in today’s world, and how that in my life which requires daily attention and effort, brings with it meaning.

At the weekend, I watched ‘My Old Ass’, a coming-of-age story with a twist produced by the makers of ‘Barbie’ and ‘Saltburn’. It was equal parts funny and moving. The film follows 18-year-old Elliot, who meets her 39-year-old self while on a mushroom trip. She then tries to live out the advice of her older self to improve her life in the long run. I read an interview with Megan Park who wrote and directed the film. She talks about how the seed of the story took root when visiting her parents during the pandemic when she was feeling nostalgic for a time in her life she’ll never be able to experience again. This idea of normal activities, like playing out with your friends or rocking your baby to sleep for the last time, is referenced by characters in the film. Rituals that fade from our lives until one day we do them for the last time, and then without realising it in the moment, they’re gone. Park has managed to articulate feelings that have been dialled right up for me during motherhood. Feelings I’ve tried to capture on here before in one of my vignettes. Often, I’m hit by a wave of emotion and I find myself thinking, ‘This - this is your life’ like I’m trying to pinch myself awake.

The things I learn about life and myself often come to me through the art that I consume. Sometimes, it feels like the messages I am supposed to receive magnetise to me over and over, helping me to see the same problem but from a different angle each time. On October 25th, Laura Marling released her eighth studio album ‘Patterns in Repeat’. The record is a reflection of her experience of becoming a mother, which, in a Guardian article, she said she wrote while looking her daughter in the eyes. I remember watching Marling play at the O2 Apollo in Manchester after my university days there. In another life, her album ‘I Speak Because I Can’ was a backdrop to my hungry, searching younger self, and now her later songs speak to me about a love that is indescribable as we mother in parallel. Each time I listen to ‘Child of Mine’, which opens the album, I can feel the lyrics in my body. I am still just as hungry and searching but perhaps for different answers. As she sings, ‘Life is slowing down, but it’s still bitchin’’.

I think my musings on time, how I feel about it and how I fill it will continuously evolve until there is no more left for me. As with most ideas that are bigger than we are, there isn’t a conclusion for me to arrive at. But I do feel like some of the things I’ve been absorbing lately have started to shift certain beliefs that perhaps hold me back from fully accepting what life really is at any given moment. I’m finding myself watching the clock less and honing in on the details of what is in front of me, be it unpleasant, dull or pleasing. On a recent afternoon when it was ‘my turn’ to watch our son, I put a record on whilst he pottered around the living room, picking up books and blocks and babbling to himself. To an outside eye, the scene would have appeared unremarkable, but within me, I felt all the wonder someone might feel when witnessing a masterpiece for the first time. I was truly there, and I knew, I could physically feel, that I never would be again.

Welcome to those of you who are new here. I talked about turning on my paywall in my last post, but I have since turned it off as I’m clearly not going to keep to a regular schedule! But hopefully, for those of you who have been around since I started this, my email landing in your inbox today was a nice midweek surprise. And if anyone still wants to show me and my writing some love, ad-hoc coffees are most welcome. I hope this week, as Burkeman advocates, you’re able to neglect your to-do list in favour of what really feels important to you right now.