Sandra Heska King

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Feeling the Weight of Time

November 21, 2016 By Sandra Heska King

loxahatchee at sunset

Feeling the Weight of Time

Today I’m feeling the weight of time.
I glimpsed myself in the bank’s overhead monitor
and saw not an older woman with graying roots
and eyebrows in bad need of waxing
but a younger version with two
dark brown ponytails at a family picnic,
remembered trail rides on a summer afternoon
and snorkeling around Buck Island over 30 years ago.

Yesterday we bought America The Beautiful
senior passes, good for a life-time.
(They offered—we didn’t ask.)
We could have shared one,
but they were only $10 apiece, so we got two,
doubled our lives.

Last night at Lester’s Diner, in the third booth,
an older woman was eating fried chicken.
She was alone, but I noticed the thin silver ring
on the fourth finger of her left hand.
I told D I admired that she braved
the traffic alone while I’m still
anxious in the light.

She twisted in her seat to better see
the commotion outside her window.
The rest of us were curious but continued
eating our spinach pies and rice puddings.
Three police cars had stopped,
blue lights strobing.

Then an ambulance sirened past,
made a U-turn on Atlantic and
parked in front of the diner.
A waitress stepped outside and returned
to tell us all a woman was on the ground,
hit by a car in the intersection.
None of us heard a sound.
We paid our bill and left the back way.

Later I told D how, when I lined up his shoes
in the closet that morning
—the dress loafers in black and brown,
the gray flip-flops that slap against his feet
and drive me crazy—
I told him how for some reason it struck me then
that one of us would be left alone.
He said he hoped it’s not him because
those few months when we were apart were enough.
Then he removed the wall clock that had slowed
and turned its hands ahead.

 

loxahatchee-at-sunset-2

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Comments

  1. Larry says

    November 21, 2016 at 4:36 pm

    That is such a sobering thought. We survived all our other life fears only to be confronted by yet another fear of loss. Age has a way of focusing quite sharply at times the inevitable.. unimaginable , that fear , that loss you speak of .Till now i have done my best to not think of it .. this is your fault …lol ..perhaps i can channel this into appreciating more than ever every moment that is left …. thanks for the nudge/ reminder …

    • Sandra Heska King says

      November 21, 2016 at 5:15 pm

      My sister likes to remind me that *everything* is my fault. So I can shoulder this, too. 😉

      Sorry. Not sorry?

  2. Linda Chontos says

    November 21, 2016 at 8:14 pm

    Oh, I understand this. Somehow I never imagined this season, but here we are. And the days spin by, and we sometimes see our own mortality clearly. It reminds me always of hope and a life so filled with grace.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      November 22, 2016 at 10:03 am

      Here we are. And we’re not alone. Love you, Linda.

  3. Linda Hoye says

    November 22, 2016 at 8:57 am

    What a beautiful, rich, and thoughtful piece of writing!

    • Sandra Heska King says

      November 22, 2016 at 10:04 am

      Thank you so much, Linda. Some of the best words a writer can hear. xo

  4. Michele Morin says

    November 22, 2016 at 10:09 am

    It always amazes me that the momentous seems to bear down on us in the routine activities of life — eating in a restaurant, straightening our shoes, or checking email and finding these words in my inbox.

    Blessings, Sandra.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      November 22, 2016 at 4:30 pm

      Oh, Michelle. Let’s make a pact to be grateful for and attentive to the routine activities of life. Thank you for coming by again today.

  5. Sophia says

    November 22, 2016 at 10:12 am

    This one really sobered me up! Our lives are but a vapor and that becomes more apparent every day. Thank you for your thought provoking and challenging insights. Blessed Thanksgiving!

    • Sandra Heska King says

      November 22, 2016 at 4:32 pm

      Hi Sophia. It’s so nice to see you here. You are right about our lives being a vapor. It’s hard to remember that in the everyday hard things. I’m praying we remember to give thanks for every moment. A blessed Thanksgiving to you, too.

  6. Dea Moore says

    November 22, 2016 at 4:20 pm

    I have read two or three poems of late on a similar theme. Kind of makes me nervous if I’m honest to have them stacking up like that. When this one slipped in my inbox this morning, I read it and I was undone. I was also grateful for the way you lived that day and recorded it with just the right details, then handed it to me gently so I would remember to live this day. And I have.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      November 22, 2016 at 4:35 pm

      Hello, dear Dea. I know what you mean about those sacred stackings. I always wonder, too, if they are sometimes there to prepare me for something unpleasant. But maybe they are just reminders for us to pay attention and remember to live each day to its fullest, to scratch the small irritants and then let them alone. Happy Thanksgiving, friend.

  7. Doug Spurling says

    November 26, 2016 at 10:06 am

    Well done…

    This is an all too familiar road. Now, I think, when we re-read the lines, we’ll wish we’d have left the hands of the clock, where they were, running slow.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      November 26, 2016 at 10:53 am

      Or stopped. Our grandfather clock case is in storage separate from the works. Time standing still. If only…

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Talking with D about his grandfather. One of the f Talking with D about his grandfather. One of the farmhands said Grandpa King was one of the toughest men he ever knew. In the dead of a Michigan winter, he wore a baseball cap instead of a knit hat. In April through October he never wore a shirt.
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Once he was raking hay and while trying to get the rake in gear, he fell against the tractor fender. He finished raking hay. Then for the next two days, he rode on a combine bagging oats, bouncing and breathing in dust and lifting bags. After 3 days, he said, “I don’t feel very good. I’m gonna go to the doctor snd see what’s wrong.” He had two or three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and pneumonia.
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D said he only saw him tear up three times.
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1. When his 19-year-old grandson died from a heart condition.
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2. When D said, “ Goodbye Grandpa. I’ll see you in the spring.” ( D was maybe 11 or 12. ) Grandpa was on his way to FL for the winter and knew he probably wouldn’t be back. He died about a month later.
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3. When he talked about the fact that the hotels in FL would not let black baseball players stay there. That was in the 50s.
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Also no flowers or cards. 

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It’s Inauguration Morning. Prayers for the incoming and the outgoing. Prayers for all of us because we are all exhausted. Prayers for peace and patience and safety and wisdom and more compassion and more kindness and more love and unity. And, please Lord, no more virus.
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